1. I armored myself with patience against misfortunes,
So if you do not make peace, O Time, then we shall battle,

2. You hardened a rock that yields to no foreigner,
And you were determined to be suns that no rider can subdue.

3. It seems you were not content to exile me in a faraway land,
Unless I were to dig into the lands of the Maghreb.

4. A land whose water flowed over sterility,
So that every drinker became a drawer from it.

5. I was weaned from every cup and pleasure,
And spent the treasure of my life without obligation.

6. The chief of rage lodges in the fold of my arm
In exchange for the neck of the roaming gazelles.

7. The Indian attacked only to be counterattacked
On the day of battle amid charges and raids.

8. If I am intimate with the sword, I befriend it,
So I have no loneliness without intimate friends.

9. I was like my sword’s sheath in my youth,
I entrusted to it that it would gain me profits.

10. If I have wishes to accomplish with the noble,
How many wishes does Moses’ staff have!

11. Do you reckon I forget? Yet I still remember
The betrayal of my time or the betrayal of my companion.

12. He was nurtured by my morals when small, yet there were no
Taxes for him except opposing my taxes.

13. O Lord of a plantation made bitter
Though it was watered by the fresh rain of clouds.

14. By my experience I learned things I was ignorant of,
For things may be unknown before being experienced.

15. He who thought the waters of old wells were sweet
Discovered the opposite when he drank from them.

16. I mounted determination in the saddle of every noble steed
To further my purposes by cutting off causes.

17. A fleet mount made slender by emaciation
As if it were the bendings of a spring between restraining hands.

18. When eyes the color of water’s blueness arrive
And pause upon its surface like frowning brows.

19. My true determination in my wishes carries me
To a hope from the ambition of my dishonest soul.

20. I have no peace but the solitude of my thoughts
As if with them I make present every absent one.

21. And when I saw people terrified by their evil,
I avoided them and chose the solitude of an ascetic.

22. How I used to converse with an imaginary companion,
Who had, in my cares, a visitor’s prevention of my sleep.

23. Does my bodily form fail to resemble him, that he did not visit?
The slenderness of my waist and the whiteness of my sidelocks?

24. When one counts the months of his absence in exile,
I count for them the eras above the saddlebags.

25. How many resolves like sincere swords
Have been bared by the hands of dishonest wishes!

26. I have a star that rises in the sky of the east
That rises above the stars from my rising among them.

27. I grew accustomed to being apart from it until
The knots of days accumulated in the hand of the recorder.

28. Whenever the Pleiades hear my speech in the atmosphere
They pour in my words the ascents of wonders.

29. How much sincere affection I have for it
That wards off the shameful from its enemies though absent!

30. A trusted brother whom I counseled in comfort and youth
Whom the days had no garments to strip from him.

31. A lady prisoner, leave mentioning the eras of her life
For the fingers of the recorder have been filled with them.

32. When the water flows in the racecourse of valour
The pearls in it become manifest between the foam and sediments.

33. Nights in Mahdiyya seem to be
Pearls from your world placed atop necklaces.

34. Nights that went away taking only
The pearls they threaded on necklaces for the fleeting years.

35. When I wish to throw the crescent with a glance
I glimpse a pendant in the sky of high rank.

36. Had my land been free, I would have come to it
With a resolve that considers travel a single leap.

37. But how can I redeem my land
From captivity in the hands of the plundering tyrants?

38. If those dogs gain its food
It will be after tranquility for the pulsing veins.

39. When its people perish because of sedition
In which every fire-kindler fans his flames?

40. Their whims have become in it as though
Their ways are the differing of doctrines.

41. Nor did relatives spare relatives,
Watering swords from the resting place of relatives.

42. Had they been pulled by their fingers, it would not have been
The fees of the singing girls therein.

43. Defenders - when you see them in an evil predicament
You would be satisfied with lions after every angry one.

44. When they strike in the strait of striking they bare
Lightning bolts from their hands in clouds.

45. The day they stab with lances they have hands
That tear apart the lions in their den for the foxes.

46. Ruin lies in wait for them, their neighing lasting long
In the land of their enemies with the crying of wild animals.

47. Their ears adorned as if bent
Beneath their turbans like the reeds of a writer in the desert.

48. When they turn them to the aspirations, they make them
Circle about to hear mention above the stars.

49. When they are silent in the overwhelmings of death they speak
Of the whites of their sharp swords on the whites of the cheeks.

50. You see the flames of fires writhing in the thickets of acacia
Tasting deaths from the palms of the givers.

51. They are a people who are not feared to divert
From death if the black standards advance.

52. If a people go astray from the path of guidance they are guided aright,
What misguidance is there for the penetrating stars?

53. How many of them are earnest in might when he charges
Not heeding the consequences when attacking the feet.

54. He has a band whose opening of two rent valleys
Is like your rending in the faces of the well-trained horses.

55. When they invade Roman lands their entrance therein
Is like the entering of intestines into the bodies of lions.

56. They die the death of honour in the intensity of the fray
While the people of cowardice die between the elbows.

57. They filled cushions of struggle to be their grave pillows
Prepared for them in burial beneath their shoulders.

58. They hid in the graves of decay like the setting
Of stars, and left upon the world the blackness of gloom.

59. Behold! The abode of the Banu Tus is in the protection of God,
And its pouring torrents have run upon it.

60. I portray it in my mind every hour
And my tears flow for it drop by drop.

61. I yearn with the nostalgia of the prophet for the homeland
Whose songs appeal to me.

62. He who travels from a land where his heart settled
Wishes for the returning there like a returning raven.