1. Though the slanderers deny, still I'll say
The flashing thundercloud watered the two slopes

2. With yellow torrents - did they make visible to my eyes
That I am rightly guided or gone astray?

3. So I kept praying to God until they sucked
From the eye a tear with hanging ear-locks

4. In it a cool south wind its sender extends
Daughters of childbirth pains, a white house

5. Below them some foxglove, so the bending ones
Are thyme wherein are prayers and mint

6. As for the prayers (thyme), they're obvious
And its mint is inside the foxglove, a purgative

7. It startled the wild sheep with a dodder
Humming, letters quiver and move

8. As if over old spirits it scratched their flesh
Quickly exciting, slackening from passion

9. Spirits of Ughnun, snatchers of shame
They imagine to the ghosts a west so they bristle

10. It included them until its association was complete
The quick, so the rejecters of faith are losers

11. It insists on them, in its lowness and love
The most stubborn everlasting from fires kindling

12. It turns them willingly and unwillingly if they refuse
A rod - carnations have slipped away from it -

13. The fiercest, strict in his two sandal-thongs
Of poverty, lands arid and fruitful

14. He challenges nine that he has protected for a pasture
That commits wrongdoing from them and justice

15. So he met Abi Bishr watching the water
With some fishing gear, roses and spear-grass

16. He turns images over as if their blades
Were embers of live coal or a slit reed-mace

17. So when he approved their deception and confusion
And from the heart’s recess met his death

18. He threw them away carelessly as if his hand
Were just a stick shoved into his head, twisted

19. So he lodged them in both shoulders and turned after them
With the valley path high and easy to climb

20. And left them bending from the heat of their brows
Colliding with the ground, cheeks and bald head

21. And a fleet-footed hyena from a lair passed by as if
On a level plain, a convoy on the move

22. And they snarled without consulting, all of them
Have from the garb of resolution shelter and refuge

23. Hoping for drink from a wineskin and water-skin -
And death is only where the water-skins take you

24. On it Ubayr lies in wait for what shooting
Pleases him but the excellent perforated

25. And they met Jabbar the son of Hamza after he
Had relaxed enjoying whichever of his two affairs is better

26. Turning images over as if their blades
Were wild pigeons which summer had harboured

27. And yellow from a spring - their sisters’ echo
Is generous with the hands of the pullers and stingy

28. And he remained seeing the vacant land as if it
Were watch-towers fearing its descending horrors

29. Tempting his soul - winking eyes
He wades about where the barking is and foxholes

30. So when the night declined against him he shot them
Fate’s arrows rise and fall

31. So he risked the deserted plateau around him
In its places a loved one, and a third

32. So he submerged her, inciting, then compared her
Pulling the thorn bushes nearer from their aloofness

33. And she became in the desert’s expanses as if
The passion had rested, the loving held back

34. Look - this is the mother of the two boys when she saw
Pallor on my body’s edge shaking

35. She says, with what had been fresh and thriving
It changed and transition seized it

36. So if you ask my friends about me they will inform you
When my wrappings unravel - the bewildered

37. They will inform you I am praised, of excellent memory
Brother of the people, answerer of wastelands, a club

38. You will see me tomorrow morning shake from the dew
As Yemeni swords are stripped for scouring

39. So let not the gloaters rejoice in their joy
When my bodies are obscured by soil and lizard holes

40. And I became feverish under a colocynth tree in a tract
A south or north wind alternates visiting me

41. Wishing me a death I was no forerunner to
A company who doubt the accidents, ignorant

42. A company whose affection has become discordant
And their evil commanding the days, arriving

43. My surroundings have made souls between which
And the basin of death for drinking there is no water-spring

44. As the evening viewed the night or the level of dawn
Sparrows in the crevices of granite, chirping