1. My heart today is smitten and restless,
When they descended they did not delay or linger.

2. Every loud-voiced and working woman is challenged by them.
In their fine weapons there is no defect or dullness.

3. They float about in the tents slack-tied,
When I say bend aside from their march, they comply.

4. And in the rooms white, proud she-camels,
Shivering from cold that luster has adorned.

5. A suffering that would heal hearts if contested with,
Like lightning, no comfort or scarcity in it.

6. A cure for sick eyes though no sickness clings to them,
A scent for noses, no harshness or stuffiness.

7. Their skins are clothed in a fragrance whose color is dawn-shine,
While all their complexions are yellowed and smooth.

8. They did not care though they marched to their wildness,
Among them were fools and crack-brained men.

9. The floor of the abode after its heyday is wasted,
Its soil by the sweeping of souls is brushed away.

10. And that which pours down on it is flooding rain,
Arrogant, copious, its water held back.

11. Rubble, high and thick, enclosing depressions,
As though tarrying heedless within the house.

12. It spurts the gushing torrents and its showers
Strip the skins from the pebbles, tumultuous and leaping.

13. It has worn away the relics of encampments and altered them,
So that all their vestiges are erased and blotted out.

14. Hilltops and slopes and winding valleys,
Like common books that are studied and conned.

15. There the ostrich’s feet wander while the mountain goat’s eyes
And the moufflons are their pure parts and the suns their warp threads.

16. Neither the croaking frogs nor the loud sneezes
Hold me back from a journey when it hoves into sight,

17. And an arid, trackless, desolate task, its water-holes
Permanent, wherein is neither jinn nor mortal.

18. The party is strengthened by it until they have no need
Save for the flint and save for the kindled brand.

19. As though its landmarks and the tents they raise up
Are foam brought forth that appears and sinks back in again.

20. The barren uplands are coupled with it in its groves
Like kidneys that water and mud have nourished.

21. It has scoured hides that are as though the feathers when they are shed
By the bird beating them in its threshing-floor, the lentils.

22. I have gained them while the people’s heads incline
Drowsily, drunk, and from the gloom they have slumbered.

23. As though they in their coverts and the night covering them darkly
When they spoke to thee out of tipsiness, they faltered.

24. Of them grasping the wine-skins naught remains
But the soul and the breath.

25. Carrying me is a virile she-camel, durable,
And a vigorous riding-beast, a thoroughbred Sa’dis.

26. Quick she-camels, masculine, their letter pronounced alike,
While all their treadings are silent and smooth.

27. She passes a hill-like dune with traits
Like the leaders’ though no sorrow clings to it.

28. The tooth has left its mark in it though it is combed;
As it leaves its effect on the common hack.

29. As though it after the eye’s exhaustion, when it was tired,
Were a patch-coated garron with a withered face.

30. It spent the night by a lively whistling thorn-tree
That a wind makes applaud when the darkness lifts from its person.

31. It encountered slender game, lean of flesh, raiding,
Of Dumat al-Jandal’s hunters of wild beasts, seeking.

32. It loosed hounds that did not flinch and chased them,
Loping, of variegated hues, sullen.

33. Longing to bear him seized it while it bore him
While he in fright of the huntsman cowered, cringing.

34. Until when of their mouths it gained the leap
And no harm met it, all of them docile,

35. It wheeled as if an enraged lion turning in fury,
Brandishing a blade that makes the lionesses scatter –

36. So they are different, a wounded one and a ducking one!
It stretched those first with a blow and went straight for them

37. So in succession to its hounds it spurred them on.
And it sank down like a falling star in its swoop –

38. As the kindled brand gleams amid the darkness.
Thus I likened it to a slain old she-oryx

39. When every rope lies prone upon it, dangling easily.
It purposes the Commander of the Faithful, al-Walid –

40. Though the travel were long and the waste lands spread before it –
God’s Caliph from whom the clouds are summoned for rain

41. No filth ever touched his garments.
A staunch king who attacks affairs formidably

42. When the hot-head is perplexed by the strategy.
To him have submitted the Arabs of the horizons, fearing him,

43. And the Byzantines submitted all together and the Persians.
They fear the columns of troops passing among them

44. Bearing complete mail-coats for their warriors.
With them you bring captives, then divide them

45. As wild beasts stalk your prey in the wilderness.
Your enemy is broken by force – verily hatred kills them.

46. And if they intend any treachery, may they be wretched!
They see nothing and in their ears is deafness

47. When you rouse them from some temptation, they relapse.
They are those whom I have heard God promise

48. And the idolaters – whoever does not support you is unclean!
Their words raved whether you said good or ill

49. At the assembly, whether they stood or sat.
Umayya has lost the paths of truth in following them –

50. Verily affairs to the doubter grow confused!
A people who when thoughts are prodded, think noble thoughts –

51. Verily lineages come together and then intertwine!
And the easiest people to give to one grabbing,

52. And the readiest people with lances when they wax hot!
They are not afraid when killing befalls them,

53. Nor are they happy with redemption should they be hard pressed!
When Quraysh resolved they were its leaders

54. And the best of them to foster glory when they were grafted!
A people supporting me whom I have pardoned –

55. Never by thy life did they grudge nor sulk!