1. If only fantasy were prey to my sleep,
Drawing near with your specter, intimate or distant.

2. Long have I followed the path of my ardency,
Making your estrangement and avoidance my provision.

3. Less grievous to me is what it has burdened me with of sorrow,
If only your specter were among my visitors.

4. Rarely has slumber descended upon an eyelid,
Restless, repelled without repose.

5. Never do the eyelids meet it for an hour,
And if they meet, it is with shedding copious tears.

6. May my heart, which I left
Standing, blaming and helping, not stray.

7. Indeed, he who inhabited slumber and pillows
Does not know how he prophesied against my pillow.

8. Still the night’s bosom is torn,
From every loving family, a place of greeting.

9. It waters the abodes where decay has dwelt
Between expiration and the side of corpses.

10. And when the winds blow their breasts
For embracing the present of your land and the absent.

11. I have sent to you from tears
Floods, and from sighs, gusts.

12. Whenever I seek the aid of a group of tears,
The flocks of familiar separation disappoint it.

13. If not for your love I would not have been humbled, and yet
My honor mocks me for my heart’s humility

14. What is with time driving me away from my pursuit
And dissuading me from my intimate friend and birth?

15. It grieves over me when I stay as if I am not
Secrets in the intestines of every land.

16. The customs of these people are condemnation of the preferable
And blame of the valiant and rebuke of the generous.

17. I was amazed but no wonder
That all people are enemies of the virtuous

18. And I see my time weakening my constitution
And I see my enemy growing more stubborn in enmity

19. Do you think me to stretch out a hand while naught
Between me and you but striking with the guide?

20. I strive for every glory so I attain it
With resolve that misses the whisperings of enviers

21. Strong resolve that does not consult a neck
For speaking perils and admitting them

22. Still bearing witness for me if I interrogate it
At night with generosity, the tongue of my flint

23. My willpower guards the water of my face
Lest it be shed by my hands in supplication

24. Of what diminishes my desire, that I see
My freedom fettered by spending money equal to my shackles

25. And money is a less worthy pursuit than that I see
Myself pleading while falling short of it and wanting it

26. And a fighter whose calculations failure has tripped
On a difficult, rugged path of forefathers

27. I mastered the nature of his generous steed in full
And the precedence in smooth running is due to my steed

28. And many a grim day whose sides
Were burnished by the gait of rides and excursions

29. A day that spilled the clouds' blood upon the courses
With gazelles, not wearing mourning clothes

30. And for the charm of delicate atmosphere, secrets
That shine from the passing clouds' shreds

31. I took its clear complexioned parchment
And the stars, pale slender pillars

32. They obtained according to the extent of hope, and yet
It is watered according to the extent of the bucket that draws near

33. A people, if they knocked on the settlements’ towers
They concealed the fire’s openings with armor

34. No hope in a person’s heart strayed
Except their existence was its guide and mentor

35. Logs that trip misfortunes and an open expanse
Forbidden save to visitors

36. They dragged the canals’ pipes as though
They dragged with them the adjacent frontiers

37. They deter naked, unresting upon the soil
Frolicking, as if the soil were the thorns of brambles

38. The nape of every smooth-necked gazelle among them
Suffices it on the day of hunting instead of a saddle

39. They pitched the tents of the white fortresses over the departures
Whose margins are the canals’ condition

40. Withered which criticism trains, though it
Increases in ignorance each day of scourging

41. They carry the burden of death while fleet
In piercing amid most slender and deep

42. They embedded canal orientation from the first drops
Where the fire of hatred is kindling

43. And they forgot in the impact of hooves in a quandary
They filled the hearing faculties of the rigid with it

44. A master whom the noblest horses birthed breezily
Under the burrow, bringing forth the lions

45. War donned unto it an impassioned kiss
And grew accustomed from it to breasts of rugged ascent

46. And their faces birthed the violent rising
And the swords’ gazelles weaned the sheaths

47. From each blade whose inner depths concealed
No souls and it was stuffed with other than heart

48. The horses drink up the earth, their eagles
Expelling it upon the shoulder blades

49. They came like the torrent whose neck straightened
To the resolve of the eagle toward the valley’s rest

50. And its galloping almost wipes
Traces of what it carved into the heights

51. And it is as if when they bow, kneeling,
They prayed towards a direction of the livers

52. And they tore the garb of resentments with smoothness
After it encompassed the hearts of malice

53. If their coats of mail are stripped, then they
Clothe themselves in tanned skins of bodies

54. The strikers returned their men in crimson turbans
And their women in mourning clothes

55. They do not destroy the structures of truces as if
Their ribs were erected upon hatred

56. Terrifying like the water pipe if it ran swiftly
And for the covetous, a place of habit

57. Almost taking flight from fear if they were not
Among the shields’ banners in sheathes

58. Our spears have reached every greedy one
And our swords encompassed every want

59. I am the maternal uncle of every young man if I rouse him
I rouse him like the biter or the accustomed

60. He grew accustomed to the sword, so if it calls him for a raid
His steed hurries him without saddle

61. His lifeblood’s flow from the canal sufficed it
For a time, and the dew polishes it in the preserve

62. If he is generous he enriches the needy, and if he attacks violently
He exhausts the canal with ambushes of horsemen

63. What will convey to the poets from me that I have
The words of heroes and aid of the prepared?

64. Indeed, this poetry used to be stripped from them in the bounty
So its tie became my birth