1. A peak of its people departed, so its torrent subsided,
And the circling stars of Al-Dawani went out.

2. It's as if the white nights have the ruins of Dimnah
With roofs that the morning breeze makes desolate and illuminates.

3. And its darkness faded from the south of Unaizah
As the darkness of watching faded from its torrent.

4. So if the white nights camp at Usfan or come near
To Layla's sand hill or to Badr is their destination.

5. Let whoever weeps for white nights weep
When they leave from Rahrahan their little homes.

6. What harm could the white nights have caused us
If they had shown affection, kept secret or open?

7. They showed us the basins of death, then tossed
For us a ladle like an aloe wood bucket turned by them.

8. It's as if an unmated mountain goat of Tabalah
Is led by it the day they part, her camel.

9. It has an Uqhuwan camel tied with a tether
A hand with shells pulls its leading rope.

10. As if it were a mare whose strap the guide loosed one morning
Where its bedding is discarded into destruction.

11. It's as if the eyes of onlookers crave
The honey its hand milks, good is the hand that milks it.

12. They drank a draft of fermented juice from the water-skins of Shumaz
Behind them a skin whose stitches are not yet rent.

13. A little Kinani mare that estrangement of desire drove on
Like a borrowed bucket the manufacturers sent back to its owner.

14. If a lovesick man sought cure in its spit
It would heal the split lips of him who tastes it.

15. It seeks protection in the Tughlibi lineage and if it called
On Ali ibn Masud its supporter would have might.

16. If you are one whose bonds are severed, whosedwelling abandoned,
One whose friend tore the rope of harmony from it.

17. Then its only tiesare tothe creature of Mirrah
Whose neigh breaks the necks of ostriches.

18. A beautiful, Sairee creature,when the long-necked
Ostrich is coupled, the last of its flock.

19. A release of journeys, when it meets misfortune
And its gut twists within it and its lungs contract.

20. The pipes of the water-skin turn back its bubbles
As the arrow recoiled in the bow flexible.

21. A bay in full frolic when the family mounted it, it is as if
It were gales thrashing palm trees that rouse them.

22. As if its movement were above the bent frame of a boat
Obeying the caulker who repaired its base.

23. And about it the old camels were asked in every herd
That for it has boiling pots—its driver does not conceal it.

24. It remained long at the spring till Canopus rose
And its figure followed the sun and its shape disappeared.

25. When the Pleaides went down it hid and drew in
Its pillars while the sun copied its image.

26. It remained undecided whether to watch the wings of night
Or rouse them. From Ain al-'Arikah it viewed a watering-place

27. For it a twisting valley with clear, pure water.
It called to a skin like the baskets the washerman carries

28. As the employee's camel carried the clothes of the washerman.
It buttsthe wildcats so they strike its throat

29. And the collected (hump) fat from it, its eagles.
Against the like of it I relieve my anxieties when they come

30. When the soul's grief boiled from it, its conscience.