1. Stop at the ruins with trailing skirts
Their ropes have become ragged tatters

2. Time has divided its seasons among
Their prime, maturity, and decline

3. So every snatcher of embraces lingers
A singing bird wrapped in feathers

4. Like a roe deer it was unstained and grazed
On the blossoms of meadows and waste tracts

5. Until when autumn smote its lodging
It moaned with the moaning of palm-trees

6. The glancing of eyes comes at dawn
Blowing sharp breaths into the knots of necklaces

7. The sand grouse have flown from your eyes as though they were
Palms of Juwatha tottering with clustered dates

8. On the three days I will not cease to have
Sorrow of heart for every three days

9. My pressing anxieties that besieged you
Have prevented your eyes from closing in slumber

10. And you saw the guest of care does not accept any abode
Save the juxtaposition of ribs with ribs

11. Spirited horses whose halters the violent south wind has dragged
Tearing up roots if the rider travels after nightfall

12. Neighing if the skillful drivers depart at dawn
With the neighing of fracture on fracture

13. They sought a chief for their tribe and clan
Their cry and their piercing voices at daybreak

14. A king whom if you milk his spears’ points
He stills the echoes; and if you call for help, he brings help

15. Tabuk’s daughter has made trial of him
Neither dishonest nor hesitant nor false

16. He is like an ingot no rumor circulates
About his honor, no sneak and no meddler

17. His sword cleared the mote from it and trimmed his sword
From its rust and cutting edges

18. Brightener of the etched blades for war and time of distress
Under arms his imagination forms a plowshare

19. They tore from him the cords of his forbearance
And if the father of cubs is aggravated, he becomes confined

20. Were it not for kinship, he would drive them back with events
That make dogs forget a once-loved spot and previous halt

21. With the horses above their backs are horsemen
Like hawks when they meet scatterers of calls

22. But your nearness pardoned him who has never ceased
And his father to be mercy and succor unto you

23. The hems of his ample gown are attained by the neighbor
Of his house, who avoids ordure and cobwebs

24. Amr son of Kulthum son of Malik who
Left the high part to his father’s sons as legacy

25. They dominated time when they were mature men, old
And they mounted over its events with their events

26. His baker flung it at him, so he brought it
Watchful, neither shy nor wearing a veil

27. His halting-places are frank when he promises a man
Who forgets the delusions of miry dreams

28. And you see our trailing ourselves upon him as though
We had come to him seeking inheritance from him

29. How many bowels would tear apart because of you
If he counted you as a familiar friend, they would seek other than you and rupture violently

30. You made independent life that enriched him
Handsome, well-clad, quiet, and furnished

31. O Malik son of kings – I see what
We were hoping would return to us is gone

32. Were it not for relying on you I would be one having no way back
To Barqaid and the land of the Bani `Unayth

33. The Kamilia were no dwelling for me
So the tombs of pleasures became my tombs

34. I never approached them from any direction without supposing
Their houses’ doorsill stakes to be my door

35. The land of happiness, if a lackey visited it
I mean al-Hutaytha – he would become a plowman

36. The intelligences retreat after its burnishing
And memory’s steeds return led like mares

37. Land where I stripped my ring from my fingers
And divorced joy thrice