1. May God protect you from the empty boasts of men,
And keep your saddlebags safe from wear and tear.

2. Rest your right stirrup from the knights’ flanks,
And the reins controlling pleasure from the left.

3. Let not the white horizons deceive you,
Gleaming there like quivering mirage.

4. You felt secure staying with grave digger clans,
Bathing in their misleading glow.

5. This long life made its clamor heard
So my face drank in their questioning.

6. I did not fail it in my quest out of weakness,
So it could force me to accept handouts.

7. Yet all of them criticize life here,
Though it has no love of life, they say!

8. Oh, do not water me from a rainstorm
Where livers of the contentious thrash about!

9. If I point out a dear companion
Whose grace would please me,

10. I'd press his throat to my throat
And circle his right arm about my left.

11. When kin are kept from my pillow,
My state shows the visitor my case.

12. But I complained to a boon companion -
When I am tried, he turns away, uncaring.

13. With the rightly-guided caliph's crown lasting long,
The days' hands tangled the nights' manes.

14. I have seen and heard of every generation,
Measuring the lowest with the highest.

15. And Dhu l-Qarnayn, when his battalions climbed
And split the mountain passes into roads:

16. The days of kings and how they lent around
Their tales, no longer stirred, no longer told.

17. Yet I do not know your anxiety when
The resolutes are worn down by affliction.

18. Those who saw them struggle knew the early ones.
One binds, resisting; another casts off and leaves.

19. A willow switch at daybreak struck the buds,
Severing the sprouts just getting tall.

20. He reasons his care with a coming resolve,
When care is reasoned away by procrastination.

21. Slumber has not toyed with his eyelids,
A sign of boredom that is.

22. He who seeks the stars lengthens patience
For the distance and the goal.

23. The needy one's need bears fruit in success
If resourceful skill is in it.

24. So send it shuffling in its wrappings,
A wallet overflowing with pure musk.

25. They were loosed as if flash-flood pools
Pouring them out to the ends desired.

26. Subtle, with soft rebuke between alarm and awe,
Warding them from foolishness.

27. They attacked the chief of `Ad's sons,
While between his lids a phantom of dreams.

28. In unknowing they caught him by surprise,
Not marked by their sharp swords or spears.

29. He cloaked himself in a robe and gloried in it -
Without the cloak he'd have had no glory.

30. The clan of Shayban felt their blows
Against cheeks aflame with fiery sparks.

31. Those riding to join the caravan asked about them,
So guesses were ambushed by the facts.

32. A strange unease fluttered over them,
Tongues challenging the shining blades.

33. It boded them ill with treachery in war -
But what excuse in killing them was there?

34. Farther from repentance the one who mingled
Deeds with argument, youth that he was.

35. Virtue's essence gathered in Arrahi,
Noble in pardon, to be feared in vengeance.

36. His resolves are saddled and ready to charge,
The reins of reason opened to action.

37. For dawn raiders he readied a troop
That shakes the hilltops like coughing.

38. With throats as gaping wounds, every sword
A flame whose sharpness the wise restrain.

39. When you lead them out as one body,
It seems you've mingled wine with pure water.

40. When the full moons crash down each day,
Burnishing cannot make wise conversation.

41. The bases of pillars are cultivated minds
That shake like grains of sand.

42. Every mother-root that cradled her sons
For the day of terror or day of strife

43. Silenced by you, their mouths bound fast
As you bound tight your mule's mouth from braying.

44. The weapon of one who acts without delay
Is not diminished by luxury and pride.

45. It breathes an air whose scent gives life
To the banner of nobles and the lofty.

46. A garden breathed on by morning breeze
Flitting among ostriches and acacia.