1. A wilderness, winding us and wounding us
My serious strides have certainly been serious in us

2. Did our thickets not bruise it with their thorns?
Did our brooks not enrich it with their streams?

3. Did the drinkers though they bloodied our cheeks
Bend it as much as we bent our drinkers?

4. As if we never took comfort in our lofty heights
Nor did we spend our wrath in our restraint

5. Nor did we till the stone peltings, nor did our blood
Quench, nor did our hands plant anything?!

6. My serious strides, we have stirred our energies
Stirred our resting places, stirred our precipices

7. You have borne us, bleeding, oozing blood
Borne us angry, provoked

8. Borne us and the excess fury that mills us
The millstone's milling and the wound's swelling overwhelms us

9. You have borne us, for patience spits us out
And a thousand dark nights call out to us

10. And burning embers lie in wait for us
And we head towards it, our drinkers racing!

11. My serious strides, this road is the most difficult
A cloudburst and grass that bequeath softness to us!

12. How much withered we made our pillow, and how many
Waters we were immersed in, almost leading us astray

13. And how much shade we took under its canopies
We did not know we took shade under our snakes

14. Until every forked tongue dripped onto us
With a thousand fangs full of deafening us

15. So our hungry one returned to chew at its sides
And clothed its blood, stripping us bare

16. We have become ascetic, so O our innards, cave in
To the limit of backs, and O our past shadows

17. Pull at every vein of our limbs
Until the veins cut the veins

18. Until we return with no care worrying us
No mirage upon misery wishing us well!

19. My serious treader, how many oases your steps dug
The colors of shade upon the eyelids of our vigil keepers!

20. We are forewarned for this sand, chewing it
At times, and it chews our depths at times

21. We are roasted upon it, so it waters us with thirst
While our rivers water it with continuous waters

22. And we meet with the raging winds slapping us
So they do not intertwine eyelids with our waters!

23. The shade may draw near the touching of fingers, exhausted,
And drink water to the throat, thirsty,

24. And an era may pass by us, not seeing
Shade, not even for a bird's wing passing by

25. And our shade is wiped out from the excessive
Sun stuck to us, drawing near us and us nearing!

26. My serious burdens, how miserable a brother of travel
Who walks to it while the sun and mud and clay!

27. We have sown its years in our cheeks
And we have raged at its severity in our resting places

28. And we have crowded for it our most resolute caravans
So it limped, and the people were led by us

29. And we have not ceased as long as a child stood on a foot
Except to slip into the footsteps of our vanguards!

30. O uncle Awf, may God water you wherever your steps went
And may the longing of those who love us hover around you

31. If there was the merit of dew in our meadows
And gifts kissed your mouth, taken

32. By yearning for us prevailing, stimulating us
For we are fortunate here, asked about you

33. With a questioner about you, though our valleys choked!
With one stuttering, an exhalation heating us

34. And one stuttering, a breath cooling us
So we have not been deprived of your murmuring frothing us

35. Nor your roaring quenching us
Nor if they weakened, have our zephyrs abandoned you

36. Nor if they dried up, did our vales desert you
O uncle Awf, we have for you a tradition

37. That we take turns with affliction rhyming us
We see the glint of blades before they are unsheathed

38. So the wound embraces before the stabbing, ransoming us
And we hear the mute sigh before the lips

39. Part from it, grieving us, showing us, and blinding us
O uncle Awf, we have hardened each organ

40. Among us with one intending to bleed and make bleed
With one wounded, dying toward its peak

41. Racing so it plummets our sacrifices as sacrifices
Melting in each of its days from its talk

42. Until it almost - and the voice of our wailer rises!
O uncle Awf, should I not inform you what

43. The destinies have hidden from us of what you informed us?
Inform you that with half-closed eyes we nap

44. And with palm over palm we are reassured
And we have no fear, but our chicks

45. Are not accustomed to snakes in our shelters
So we hand them over palmfuls, and to the fangs

46. We hand over palmfuls, so we twist them, and they twist us
And we bury the sigh, the depth of the wound we bury

47. To preserve the heedless fledglings heedless!
Inform you that we, even if our steps are cut short

48. Do not cease to pant as long as our depths can pant
And that however the disturbing

49. Winds blow violently at our waters and edge away from our waters
They do not weary of any lofty height among our lofty heights

50. Nor do they neglect its channels our channels!
O uncle Awf, our necks were not severed as they supposed

51. No, nor were our napes severed
We are massive, as massive as you knew

52. Frightening, our paths frightening
Black upon whom misery takes turns enraging

53. As the wind took turns enraging our volcanoes!
We have been tested by days, with days we have been tested

54. Passing over us, complaining of our negligence!
Its summer was not of crops to feed us

55. Nor its winter of livestock to water us
We did not know in it dew to awaken us

56. Nor did we find in it shade to befriend us
But yes, we were granted locusts in our pastures

57. We crowd them with harvests from our waters
And a burning that blistered the dew of our limbs

58. From its affliction, and emptiness filling our hands
And a craving for drops of dew gathered

59. The panting of seventy generations of our sacrifices!
O uncle Awf, our courses have narrowed

60. And the earth gaped into bottomless pits engulfing us
Peering from them are reptile tails beyond count

61. And the fangs of beasts in the millions
We do not cease to observe them for an age and they observe us

62. We approach and they approach, counting each other
Until the caution between us is clarified

63. And what drives us from it is revealed
And we have not stopped scrutinizing them frightened

64. And they have not stopped scrutinizing us frightening
And we, if we wanted to grind them

65. We would have ground them with our grinding teeth
But graciously we see cause

66. For good that our arrowhead delays!
O uncle Awf, should I not inform you what