1. The malady I fear has afflicted me
As if making a nightly round accustomed to me

2. My illness has weakened one whose frailty oppresses him
A neighbor is not tormented by one who associates with him

3. And one who denies the plump she-camel her desire
When the shoe is worn his going about has dried up its source

4. And I digest the dear gazelle meat and flourish
When its way is lost its beak picks the road

5. Nor do I complain of mange nor do they serve me
When the butcher has fled before the meat and sinews

6. Nor do I choose the flesh of cattle as provision
When the fragrance of musk roams in the night, its scent lingering

7. Nor do the foes feel safe from me out of fear
Nor do I insult the neighbor who is my praiser

8. Nor spend the night waiting crouched to catch
An ostrich, whose legs its nest has entrapped

9. When I am pursued I am content, and if I
Am the pursuer, a devoted follower, still I treat him fairly

10. I do not cheat him of darkness and run to him
His due right not forsaking

11. And water which, for fear, its owners have abandoned
While the young pigeons in summer remain near their nests

12. And I return with a Jesus who has submitted and youths
When the church bells in the night sound their warning

13. We cut off for them the cistern, so its half
Was for the drinking of a cheating drunkard, and the rest for his camels

14. They are muscular, placing their wisdom
Deceitful, with humps on their backs and necks

15. And a shadow like the conjurer’s shadow I set up
It flies when the wind makes its bird flutter

16. For the white faces, all their night
And their day they darkened, until their temples turned black

17. And so they became, with antimony, not distinguished between saddlebags
And the arch of a spring whose branches the wind had shaken from us

18. We took a little of our spirits and there fell
Upon a blessed, unlucky camel girths -- its saddle ropes coarse

19. Slumbering by it the swift camel, content with anxiety
While one not overtaken by anxiety scorns it

20. And so in the morning it lay there, its trappings stripped
What remains is for man, and its rare part for the jinn