1. You were greeted, o quarter of al-Lawá, from a square,
And were watered the valleys' rains, copious.

2. For I knew you while time was peaceful,
In you is wish and cure of disease of anguish.

3. Days if desire calls me I will follow,
And if I am called to propriety I will not follow.

4. For my standing was extended and my plaits
Were blackened and my hair did not grey.

5. And youthfulness on my skin was plenty,
And greyness in my tresses did not appear.

6. I watered it for a time, I enjoyed its shade,
But when it passed it did not return.

7. Poetry my intercessor in beauty was its blackness
Until when it whitened in me it did not intercede.

8. I was compensated forcibly for my ruddy sweetheart,
And it is the little raven with the piebald crow.

9. A colour you see it glistening until when
Youth disperses, it is not easily obtained.

10. Love me and chronic blindness covers my sight,
And the tooth of time by apparition disturbs my bed.

11. It did not stop deceiving me with causes of delusion
Until I reckoned that it was truly with me.

12. And I wondered at the distance between us,
How he found his way without a guide my place.

13. They relaxed to dissipation when they were given
Wine of delusion in cups.

14. They slept a little then their slumber was disturbed
Dawn’s caller, the perceivable, was hidden.

15. After sleep clung to their eyelids,
They neglected delusion at any time of rest.

16. So they rushed to the ship’s belly and hastened
A group like a flock of startled sandgrouse.

17. From every black scarf as though it was
A she-owl escaping in the four winds.

18. It shook its wings over arid ground wherein
It was guided after straying, expecting.

19. Do not complain with length of wine’s company
Of touching the forlorn or weariness of shadow’s shade.

20. They embarked profoundly, its depth surging,
Its billows having a hidden riptide.

21. They enter every abyss not finding guidance
Or emerge on a slope not previously ascended.

22. Where bravery does not save men
And perhaps a finger’s prayer may save you.

23. And I wondered at one who soils wealth’s paper
From every greedy and gaping pauper.

24. As though they did not know that He who
Gathered under sights of disasters and hearing

25. The one whose palms teem in this abode
Recoils only with a piebald palm

26. They gathered to benefit but when they were destroyed
Their wealth when depleted did not benefit.

27. And they deflected with wealth every harm
Until the Almighty matter, the Deflector came.

28. Alas! Where are the earlier ones and where is what
They built of shelter and towering structure?

29. And those baring their cloth’s dishonour
And those igniting the kindling for the observant?

30. And those who widened their situation’s blindness
And those descending the precipitous road?

31. Whoever the clothes fit of the departing
His garments would flourish on him in folds

32. The men complain to the bearer of charms among them
While their child darkens and did not grow.

33. They gather money only for hospitality
Or adopting a craft not crafted.

34. And if you seek them over a crisis
Then to my most honoured hospitality and most fertile pasture.

35. And to the unripe doum-palms the day of neighing
And the piercing in the hillsides the day of milling.

36. And to the discourse whose wafts are fragrant the day of intimacy
And it illuminates the day of council.

37. And as though you opened from it to a beholder
The lights of a meadow deprived of pouring rain.

38. They settled al-Khowarnaq and al-Saddayr and circulated
At the ridge of lofty structure’s pinnacle.

39. And they shared Ma’rib’s flats
And the unique, purely bred rugged valley.

40. They took the kings’ levies by force
Between Busra, Euphrates and Yanbu.

41. And the nearby and distant subjects submitted to them
And yielded into their hands the suppliant to the obstinate.

42. The pigeons cooed in every living quarter of theirs
And it answered them disgustedly like the obedient.

43. And I saw them in a bed and he came to them
From a place of emergence and gave them drink from a watering place.