1. Asker of ruins haunter
Inflamed by past phantoms to query

2. While house itself forsakes melancholy man
Its knower declares, without need of guide

3. As if charmed like Jrada's drinking-camp
By glamour of days and revelry of nights

4. Do you see amidst it gazelles venturing out
With fawn behind does from lairs

5. Clad in silken shifts, scented
With perfume above bracelets and anklets gleaming

6. Till when bolt-shooting ballistas descend
And it has in Rukayyah's desert expanse encampments

7. Nomads incline with it to coast of village sought
As if ships with evening first-light

8. O Kubeisha! Who tells you that many a watering-place
Hurls its refuse on the meadows all about

9. I startled safe from it beasts of prey
As gloom sneaks with twilight purpling

10. Dangerous, potent with every sand-heap
Stars in multitudes thronging and thronging

11. Would, O Kubeisha, nights had never been
Save as our night in Khabt Joala's wane

12. When the ill-omened differed from all other eves
And the like of me bewail the like of them

13. We bivouacked at an abode lit by our faces
Lusty marrow oil feeding the wick alight

14. Till when at darkest pasturage we strayed
An enclosure whose master tethered his flock

15. Of females devoted, as if from their delicious lips
Poured blood of sacrifice of young gazelle

16. And songstress I dragged to her voice my robe
For pleasure of one drinking and boon bestowed

17. A fawn sang out to us, legs prancing as it ran
When we were drinking mixed wine in goblets

18. Its singing the lutes envied with no trilling flourish or refrain at all
And if that, O Kubeisha, had not been

19. Aught but dreamer's reverie in his fancy
Kubeisha struck camp and riders bivouacked

20. Their trappings cast on the flank of night
O Kubeisha! Who tells you that many a nook

21. Is neither trifling nor insignificant
Lair as if therein were laid

22. Sweet basil debris at dawn's first breath
As if it hugged cloud vapor in its keep

23. The winds making its strands quiver clear
Dyed saffron like steed-housing cast off

24. By a Farsee its tack slipping from the packsaddle all
She meant to tempt me but when love of her waned in me

25. I gave notice to her of estrangement
And I snapped her tether-ropes—I a man who severs ties

26. Knotting ropes and severing rope-bonds too
In Ubrad's shades built I for lads and lasses

27. That hover between deep valleys and sublime heights
My surmise of them was perhaps while they in Tenufah

28. Vied for honor's richest spoils
Seeking their pleasure that khunf with its followers

29. While cattle in Bita tread its ends
They know not if they'll rise on the morrow for others

30. Or get them far from Fortune's winnings all
By God I rose at dawn against the flocks with lads

31. Brave, battlefield the flesh of them chains
So I hurried them the fullness of their daybreak

32. With liveliest mate of merit and part perfect
Bay, as if the apricots in its dusty coat

33. Patent, mixed with brown froth in the bowl
Of branching shauhata by slope of ridge

34. Where it coupled with her unlike its counterpart