1. By my life! I was left behind only to see
Men who surrendered me to what is in me

2. Behold! I see not this swift one outrun
Nor anyone who hopes for rest left resting

3. I’ve seen death pervade each watchtower
Taking some captive, stripping others bare

4. And I feared not that my end would be
The stroke of a whipping blade, a piercing spear

5. And so the whipping blade grew heedless and dull
While the piercing blade grew blunt and bare

6. To You, God of Truth, I raise my longing
As refuge and fear prolong my stay

7. If tis innocence, make innocence a boon
If a surplus, fulfill what You ordain

8. To meet You is better than refuge or trial
And I have lived days, wearied of nights

9. I wore out my father’s lifetime
And outlived my uncles and maternal uncle

10. I wish for rains of youth and wellness
Yet how can one wish what he will not find

11. How, when I've tried threescore and ten pilgrimages
And my heart harbors a knot, being what it is

12. I know not what knot resides within
Nor whom of foes I've given to drink

13. And every year you call physicians to me
Yet all they find are empty sighs

14. If you sever a vein of illness, you leave
Alongside it a channel of illness flowing

15. So burn not my skin—it is equal to you
Whether you've treated the two epochs or not

16. If you fall short of me, I'll have need
And if you stretch out, you'll not deny my fate

17. Come! Then, two months, or half a third
To the One who made absent my absence

18. I've drunk chamomile and clung to gentleness
And set to mouths of veins the hot irons—

19. To gain from my life a little and yet I see
No cure for it, if God doesn't heal, healing

20. We drank and treated, and it did us no harm
If God protects from fate—no treatment healing!

21. It came to a land, so it fancied
And made complaint of what’s in chest and head

22. I say to a weeper who laments, for he
Refuses—I think not the lamb from him will ring

23. You follow tracks by the Sura's light that fade
And you pasture on rubble from Kinda's ruins

24. So why did you, being blind, make enemies?
You did not watch like a waiting marksman.

25. If their arrows miss a dreadful lion
On purpose, they'll not miss mangy dogs.

26. We and they were like two doses of poison—
Parted, then made accusations and blame.

27. So the accuser unleashed his slips,
And this one lavished—I see not my place!

28. Last night the sons of my mother
And the sons of my uncles were freshly watered.

29. When one of them comes with a writ
It troubles what the sufferer utters.

30. On its title you recognize some of its meter
Inside it, deaf ones relate empty rumors.

31. Abu Khalid! Curb your poets—you'll never see
Embassies again—time's final ones.

32. No obedience until you battle over
Reed-pipes and men with plaited forelocks.

33. And I've not stolen among the goldflowers a sermon
Save that which the mushaf recites.

34. On a day of clouds in bloom and gusts
I took flight on a litter adorning the heights.

35. A misleading foe amidst the tumult I left—
He of great dissension—fleeing dejected.