1. How many sighs do I stifle in my core,
And to what end is my stay in the abode of disgrace?

2. Naught remains in me after bearing harm
And injustice save forbearance and tolerance.

3. In the abode of a people, if an angel saw them
In their fairest guise and hydration,

4. He would mourn the inhabitants of hell - how he sees them
While they, for it, have comrades.

5. May their enemies lose them! Their life
Is the grief of a friend and the joy of a foe.

6. Their wealth is easy pickings for adversaries
While generosity is tied in a miser's fist.

7. Kindness is not known in their quarters
Except as the legendary virtue of a sphinx.

8. The skin of a beautiful camel atop disgrace - and in them
The weakness of a hyena and a chameleon's fickleness.

9. When they initiate discourse, it is as if they are
Hens clucking nonsense in an empty barnyard.

10. Blind to benevolence, unless it is
A gift to the villainous and ignorant.

11. Deaf to virtue, yet they have often
Heard the words of the depraved against the innocent.

12. They make the impossible means to the impossible,
Which spares them the white and the yellow.

13. Wondrous they are, and those who forbid vice - you do not see
A wonder other than what shakes the heart of the seer.

14. A nose held high by the reins of the sky, imposing,
An ear that follows resolutely the settled water.

15. And they boast of a company that rose while not
The mountains of sand rose in the white city.

16. Their fatherhood has slipped from them, but vice
With its malignance grows to ripeness.

17. The noble bones are not reached
By a remainder of scattered dust.

18. Rather, a strong soul sufficed him
The nobility of ancestors and pride of forefathers.

19. What is it to the bones and pottery? All of them
Are in a flock, blind.

20. Leave the pottery to a company whom
Degradation has thickened and dried out.

21. You wiped them like foxes until
The sides of mountains were bound by their limping legs.

22. And you followed it, after wiping them,
Dragging through emptiness and pebbles.

23. And slaughter is their limit - and does one of malice
Accept less than the most heinous villainy?

24. What pride is there for one with no control over his possessions,
No authority to take or give as he wishes?

25. They collected no honest gains,
No entrusted or blessed treasures.

26. So for every plunderer and lowlife raider,
Dry, malignant, and quarrelsome,

27. And the remainder of hoarded wealth is shared out
And wasted on slaves and slave-girls.

28. Oh, if only there were men - where is the gallant one
Who would protect the sublime with his sword?

29. By God I swear, if I called on my zeal
Alive, it would answer my call and cry.

30. But I called on the dead, whose specters
Still walk with the living.

31. They have become accustomed to disgrace, so if it drifted
Away from them, they would hasten eagerly to Sanaa for more.

32. By God! A people from Judhaifa's clan
Did not close their eyes to the disgraces.

33. When they saw it was so, they resolved
The resolve of conquering Wa'il's heroes.

34. Until they quenched their swords' thirst
On clotted blood that cooled the heat of rage.

35. They left Lu'ayy in the Hijaz
An island before the oven of Ibn Dhakwan.

36. There Khaybar's destiny was sealed, and it exchanged
After that, good fortune for misfortune.

37. The likes of men, what harm if they
Did as those honorable ones did?

38. Death is better than their lives
Like the life of Nun who slept in desolation,

39. Or they wandered the vast earth - for wandering
Is better than the sanctuary of Yamama.

40. But they are like hedgehogs who, when they see
No eagles, rest on their backs.

41. Blessed are the cows of Iraq, for they
Are firmer in their defense and truer in loyalty.

42. How often they gored with their horns
A wolf, returning, loyal to their young!

43. Better yet, a bird that floats on its waters,
Resting awhile, gazing at the stars in the desert.

44. The predator cannot seize it forcefully
For the thorns of its talons protect it.

45. Rather, it pecks his abdomen, and when sated
Dice and divide it until it ends

46. In a cooked broth, torn to pieces.
Oh companion, departure draws near - prepare for me

47. Every bundle and container for the journey.
What excuse has a freeman to stay in a land

48. Whose pillars are a kind of goat?
They followed neither the example of men nor donkeys.

49. Reject life itself, not even the ways of aquatic birds!
The land is vast, springs plentiful,

50. And distance is made near in meadows.
And I have a dwelling place near Zuraa,

51. If I wish, or in humped Mosul.
Where I will not meet the envious, angry,

52. With boiling pots of hatred.
And where the brothers of purity gather,

53. Whose loyalty and manners of scholars are embraced.