1. Be brief, for time is never brief
Until what comes before follows what is after.

2. It destroyed Luqman son of Aad though
His youth had been destroyed by seven vultures.

3. And it seized Dhahhak from behind the armor
And the numerous garrison of Mishrafiyah.

4. And it stripped Jadhimah al-Waddah of his crown—
He and those who came after Tubba.

5. And when I remember the clan of Ubayd who worshipped
The flowing tears of sorrowful recollection,

6. The turns of time ate them away and rent
The edge of their might with the turns of fate.

7. After they were like stars shining on Tayyi’
They dwindled till they were like lost camels.

8. Few were they, but not so few were the bolts of their fire
In confronting the wiles of the insidious foe!

9. I see rancors lie in wait for them
In every group that would flare up against them.

10. Gently O Banu Shammal, gently, your arrival
At the basin of discord bodes no gentle consequence!

11. Why do you exchange glances with eyes
Whose red-hot embers of rage leap high?

12.
You grasp glory by grasping like contumacy

13. Yet contumacy in glory is despicable.
Vying over leadership is a slippery thing—

14. It brings no security and gains no victory.
The excess of the early Juras consumed them.

15. And they hastened to the mansions of moldering ruins.
So they parted before they truly parted

16. From meadows of herbage and vacant wilderness,
Till the greatest man among them was broken at Jabir

17. And here eyes grew weary from long waking.
Remember the war of corruption—how often

18. Did it pass by the champions like troubled waves?
It transported the lovely Jadilah from a broad plain

19. Of gardens flowing and a verdant yard,
And strangest of all is that the sorrow in your breasts

20. Was not quenched by the tremendous, momentous event—
The tragedy of Abu Ubayd succeeded

21. By the loss of Abu Humayd thereafter.
Had they been from the plateau of Afar and perished,

22. The snaking pillars of dust over Afar would have succeeded each other.
Three seas whom the passion of death bore away

23. To three graves.
I see Shumayl and Bari, both doomed,

24. Embracing Death however long they are granted life.
Riding the spears after bearing them in battalions

25. Of armies attacking and counter-attacking.
Two elders wearied by the weight of arms

26. And outstripped by the vision of the All-Seeing, the All-Hearing.
They are not called to plan stratagems with the warriors

27. On the day of battle or plot with the schemers.
Of the absent from your muster, none was absent

28. From the eyes’ ken. Of those present, none attended.
Do you not see the lurking gloaters before you

29. And behind you, whether overt or veiled?
Without crime you have come to them but grandeur—

30. An effulgence of glory gleaming white!
But the noble man’s nobility, when he claims it,