1. In God's name - O days of Yathrib return
Return to the night of the passionate hut

2. Never did my charms shine more beautifully
In languid eyes and my freshness return

3. Days when misfortunes had not yet worn me down
As they passed, nor twisted my pillar

4. When the whitenesses of time had not yet toyed
With the parting of my hair or my temples darkened

5. Oh how far between me and my loved ones
And grey hairs appear in my tresses not far off

6. I know my youth has departed and been stripped away
There is no share in the exuberant gazelles

7. My arrow was once straight in archery
But with grey hairs it is no longer straight

8. Say to her of languid glances and polished pearls
Why do you grieve for a lover with a kiss?

9. As though your lips were not cold
Leave the necklaces in their caskets and be content

10. With their buds tied in a knot
You are free in your love so know

11. And hold power over the tied captive
Once I was firm in passion but on the day

12. Of parting, I was no longer firm
How many rods lie dormant in the tents

13. Once fertile but now barren of youth's water
I know not what his love will lead me to

14. And what it will bring me back from my feast
What is left for me, now their tents are struck

15. Except sighing and the moaning of the lute
And a procrastinator whose promised day comes

16. Deceitfully, distrusting what is promised
On his cheeks a beauty spot enhancing

17. His beauty, and beauty is better than a good cheek
I have two groups - one group led by yearning

18. Or a group avoiding me and being distant
Say to him who drove the slanders perhaps

19. You have driven my heart between those slanders
And cast into both my heart and my eye

20. That fire, and moistened this eye with tears
And if my tears one day flow copiously

21. The joy of betrayal will not benefit your denial
What harm can come to one whose secret path

22. And face are behind the tents in the black night
On a night when the chill of the sky is clad

23. With its stars and each star a cluster
Each day a new estrangement renews

24. And new sorrows for man are nothing new
My friend succeed with guidance and leave me

25. For I have been content to be unguided
Grant me blame for passion, for I

26. Am full of excuses and rebuttal
Rise, ask my heart however you wish and do not hurl

27. From it questions about aloof tender women
Do not ask me to live without love

28. For them, but ask my inclinations and my bending
You were my companion in the spring of my youth

29. So be my companion in my fading time
And blend the clear vintage whose flask has passed by you

30. And mix a gentle time with the harsh
Never did I see, and I was not excluded

31. From these days, any but the praised
And when I look to those I hoarded

32. For my dire times, I find none but the envious andgrudging
I am between a stingy one whose heart is barren

33. Of beauty and an ugly and repulsive one
And if I am denied access to the waterholes as a group

34. When have I been thirsty and denied greenery?
My hands would not reach their full span if they carved

35. Anything but generosity though chained
If I do not prefer them like the wild cat inclining

36. To the sublime, traversing every flat plain
And their hands twisting the length of plains

37. Twisting the loincloth, roaming with gazelles
They do not awaken from inertia but rather

38. Strike with a hand in the wilderness with separation
I gloated on the day of glory over mankind

39. With the pride of my forefathers and the pride of my ancestors
A people, when they heard the voice of conflict

40. Brought out steeds decked with the bridles of courage
They did not care when spears entangled

41. The day the hand of David wove
Their defense, their fighting, their forearms

42. On the day of conflict piercing each vein
They dominated the dignitaries of the tribes

43. Before the cutting of newborn's umbilical cords
So if you look upon their abodes

44. You see none but the fortunate and envied
While I who released the reins of generosity

45. Spreading death for people, or brought life
What difference if I do not give my possessions to one in need

46. Between my destruction and my existence?
If Hatem al-Tai and his tribe

47. Came to me, they would learn generosity from me
Men have no refuge when they are cautious except

48. My inviolable sanctuary and my outstretched shade
Never have I followed up happiness with harm

49. Toward them, nor a promise to them with a threat
The rending of mountains is not arduous though

50. The rending of my covenants has wearied time
And if I make a pact none who covets

51. Can loosen my knots with his fingers
And tribulations when they come, I am not

52. Sleeping toward them, nor apathetic
If I am angry, splitting the peaks of enemies

53. For perhaps suppressed anger is not unleashed
The black are not lions, though they deny prey

54. And crouch in the forests, they are not lions
And if I sit you will see through my eyes

55. My standing during my sitting
I am restrained by wisdom from my saying which

56. If I said it would light up every newborn
How long will I be in the clothes of distress

57. Reciting grievances, the sigh of exertion?
I shy from homelands, let not my palms approach them

58. The outcast palm is enough for me
And I avoid my wont, and my separation pains me, and how

59. Many thirsty tribes were not sated
I seek droplets from clouds, and at times

60. I wish, though my matter mocks all ancestors
And the horses stumble upon skulls and the slain

61. Covered in the dried legacy of stillness
By God may your life last, O Bani Musa, when

62. Iron collided in the clash of iron
You would not see but a corpse toppled over

63. Like a tumbling pigeon, not stretched
Rolling in the plain its feathers flew off

64. An eagle remained while its garb stayed with the master
This and how many an army came to them withdrawing

65. Over the wasteland the tails of every cloak
Branches from horses, and horsemen

66. Filled with number for him and fresh
They repelled heads which in them were unassailable

67. By striking amidst the dusty and the harvested
And when you are raised by my composition in battle

68. By the stabbing or the striking are witnesses
Take it, for you cannot evade it, it is

69. In the utmost extremity of refinement
No reproacher faulted it, nor did

70. The mind of any excellent one reveal it
Dazzling, if recited in the darkness of night

71. It would shame the black faces of men
A composition which wove between its words

72. The composition of battlefields and of each unique one
It is not one who swallowed poetry in one gulp that is a poet

73. And if he succeeded he is not praiseworthy
And if eloquent words twist around a man

74. One day, the freemen of speech are my servants
And if you wish to defame what the land wrote

75. Then listen to my ode at times and my song