1. Zainab sought you when longing was prolonged
Outside the town unattended but by

2. A sword, well sharpened, a coat of mail, and a mare
Swift, of erect ears, mingled with musk is her scent

3. Zainab sought you when my heart had drifted from passion
And grey hairs advanced barring my youth

4. Zainab sought you, she halted her well-bred mare
At a garden, where grasshoppers still sang

5. Loftily pacing, haughty of mien, mixed with scent
As if what covers her flanks is a fox’s tail

6. Graceful, plump, as if her coat behind her
Sways gently when she moves towards her cover

7. She raised her staff, the restless one, from the soil
Of a bare wilderness on a hazy morning

8. A waste enclosed by sand-dunes' bushes
Bending their branches, pathless, waterless

9. Our talk interests none amongst next of kin
Nor unrelated men. And we live self-reliant

10. Enduring bleak luck – the nomad’s wont
Guarding the eyes of our enemy in a streak

11. Of passion and youth. She appears to our fervor
And her person is hidden like sunrise after fog

12. Appears when absent is the sentinel
And the eye of the lover sees through no veil

13. She let slip some lying, doubtful words
Hers, and some words true and right

14. My tribe, why do you not ask in their honor
When your folk are the object of taunts?

15. Mudar whose precincts must not be dishonored
And who take all spoils that are to be taken

16. Threatening, so none may threaten their number
Or loose the ties of pacts they concluded

17. What stretches between Homs and Hazramawt we gird
With our swords, from valley and hill

18. In all this, Kubeisha, our abodes
Are eminent, lofty-tented, glorious

19. Mud huts built by warriors
On the plain, about wells and tents

20. Whenever enemies appear we shoot them with arrows
And they know the truth who are wise

21. With troops of foot, their gear as though
Thorn-bushes in early morn bristling and dense

22. The Za’ibiyya, their tips are broken spear-shafts
And steeds folded close, battened to loins

23. Armored in steel plate, their coats suffice them
Vicious creatures pelted with rocks

24. Splashed with boiling pitch, as though
Their saddle-skins were daubed with fox-tails

25. Chestnut and grey-coated and sorrel
Copper-colored, their bellies white

26. Scrawny with ribs that jut through their hides
Lean racers that outstrip hounds’ return

27. And every dark-bay curly-haired stallion
Following the piebald, close to his kin

28. Flicking flies with eyelash and tossing forelock
Raising dust clouds about mares heavy with foal

29. And weapons of every tall slim warrior
Posted at mountain-holds, belts tight-drawn

30. They charge Mu’sharrifa, whenever they ride by it
Breaking men’s bones and necks.