1. I seek refuge for you lest poetry disobey you
And lest the anthem sprout on your mouth

2. And lest your tongue bare whispers
And lest the unique beadwork come apart

3. I seek refuge for you lest you lose your way in every valley
While you are a messenger to every listening ear

4. So be like the pact, preserving your youth
O you, the sublime and glorious being

5. For your veins are destined to sing
With love for people, as long as the veins pulsate

6. And I say to the sayer: the old is the new
I unveiled yesterday’s face of a terrible tomorrow

7. Which a trance has unveiled
Like Al-Zarqa Al-Yamama when the keen-sighted

8. Unravelled the destinies of her people
I was no prophet through her but

9. The prophet of poetry is a willing devil
By your life, the passing nights

10. If their return is not feared, will return
Returning with the likes of what they carried and cast

11. And the likes of the radiance of the newborn dawn
Whoever learns no lesson for tomorrow from yesterday

12. Though the wise may be foolish
Youth of the Gulf and how oft are memories

13. Repeated and the repeater does not tire
I have hastened to you to spur my steed

14. To meet the echo of your praiseworthy listening
From these faces emanates a kindness

15. That makes this land radiant with its like
You have inclined towards me, spreading around me

16. The dew of love and abundant benevolence
So you are blessed and what your talents have fostered is blessed

17. And the efforts are blessed
With you and the elite of the enlightened are lost

18. The most beautiful oases of a barren desert
From the bitter salt walked a scent

19. That makes a jujube tree dance, cool and refreshed
And down the barren sands meanders a sweet Euphrates

20. And on the arid sands flourishes a rod
I stood by the Gulf, melting into it

21. An emerald whose existence balances all existence
Revolving on the banks as though

22. Were the necklaces and beads upon a neck
Unfettered, neither distance curtailing it

23. Nor barriers and dams stopping it
And around its banks lies a spring

24. Gushing with what gives life and what fades
Oil fields fatten their watchers

25. And gas fields though the budget has fattened
So I said: In nomadism is what adorns

26. Nomads, and in civilization is what builds
Abu Dhabi, in what it has taken and given

27. A bride whose dowry is flaming fuel
It has revealed to me the visions of passionate desert journeys

28. Wrapped in guesses and star divining
Skulls and how many ages have lived

29. By what skulls have endured, and hunting
Toppled over its heat, bowing

30. To it from all around, and to it prostrating
And crawling over it and to it clinging

31. And melting under it and to it clinging
Youth of the Gulf, they do not refrain

32. From pursuing the paths of glory coursed by throngs
Elevated ambition a quarry and quarry

33. Upon it and twisted passions sport and sport
One generation after another suckles from it

34. The clinging of the steadfast are the cradles
And immortalized upon its peaks

35. Does the endless and timeless eternity spread its wings
I appeal to you as the land has trembled

36. And the promise has died and the threat bristled
And the simple life has shaken and slumbering

37. Upon the eyelids have awakened the sleeping
And our land has become a sphere from which

38. Descends upon the factions, settling or destroying
And the playground of games within it has become

39. As brief as boundaries can be delineated
In it bolts of lightning snatch

40. And it is terrified by rumbling thunder
And it almost seems from the excess force

41. Cast upon the desert, the hail will scatter
Beware my people of the Gulf, for there is a beast

42. Iron-fanged, voracious and grudging
Evil in measurement, in covert partnership

43. That hunts worlds while it hunts
It flatters you and invades

44. Your coasts with fleets that wander
Youth of the Gulf, there is no choice

45. Though the preachers claimed, and no refuge
And there is none who fawns

46. To the colonists, and none who wards off
And there is no hope for our loss

47. Except the fragmented nation reunited
What a nation divided into three

48. And ten, and you ask is there more?
For each one drums are prepared

49. And guards as clauses are raised
And India has a quarter of the world in number

50. Yet in two halves are divided the Hindus
And charlatans who make witchcraft

51. And antidotes with what ancestors made
Grand delusions that entice while they are wakeful

52. And specters that please while they slumber
And the ancestors never gave Jerusalem

53. Nor did Jews occupy Palestine
Nor were they led by any foreigner

54. However and whenever he wished to lead
Saladin would share bread

55. And sleep on the ground with the soldiers
And would extend a poisoned spear to death

56. That would obey him submissively like slaves
And here he has a revolving sphere

57. While at an oil-rich prince's is a towering palace
The immortal die in every low place

58. Yet eternity eludes death
Youth of the Gulf, there is no undutifulness

59. To the vows of the beneficent, and no ingratitude
For me and you there is blood and yearning

60. And an estranged, wandering brother
And tomorrow we are to promised lands

61. Where the near embraces the distant
Unless I am with the light of pure blood

62. That signals to us dreadful visions
Visions of onlookers upon tragedy

63. As though they are witnesses at a wedding
The wounds of their own people delight them and hurt

64. The bliss of the callous hearts
Youth of the Gulf, and every foul plant

65. Will be thrashed away by the harvest
And after this day will flourish a shade

66. Upon lingering burning embers
Instead of the echo of wretched melody

67. With the tunes of wishes and a joyous composition
So if the nights ever grow pitch-dark

68. A pillar will be cloven from radiant dawn
And if the floodwaters rise against her children

69. The mother of harm, misery, and birthpangs
A generation will wake from the heart of despair

70. Desirous of might, dominant and obstinate
Bartering what may be for what is hoped for

71. And steering what is desired to what is intended