1. You knew the place for her today
In fair weather or you knew tents for her,

2. So longing awoke in a sad enamored one,
And poured out its tears copiously.

3. And the day we left Qaramah, your love
Stirred for you like a pigeon calling to another.

4. Does anyone long for ruins
Except gazelles and wild cows?

5. Qutaylah said when she saw me,
“The beautiful woman will not lack a critic:

6. I see you have grown old and acquired
A new nature and left girls and wine.”

7. If you would heed me, O killer of me, I woke
As though parting were a piercing disaster for me.

8. I put aside my confused state and stayed sober until
It was as if I had never been a boy in Dadan.

9. The cycles of time obliterate
Their sequence and the memory of swords.

10. When cares befall me, I soothingly chant
A gurgling melody to dispel them.

11. I ride them with a restive, sturdy she-camel,
Roaring to drown out the hawk’s shriek.

12. If I check her with a shout she cries
Like a trussed camel bleating.

13. She clove the night and the Pleiades for me
With a shining blade that points the way,

14. And fought the lynxes with stalks of dry dates,
Nearly besting them when the day was fasting.

15. When the guilty she-camels descended
On the lofty mountain passes, drinking wine,

16. I rode all night behind a black-necked stud
And by his scent was a noble morning drink

17. For girls who rode the meadows
Like the scent of musk that sniffs out rhinitis,

18. Gleaming as though their striped gowns
Were targets for arrows when they left off their cloaks.

19. Their brother Anmat chose among them a month
Hoping the oldest would be a year, then a year,

20. Anticipating she would make him wealthy.
He locked her away and the door was inaccessible.

21. We were true to her and it was unthinkable
For the like of her among us to be forbidden.

22. In her was the radiance of the sun’s horn
When it shone through her openness.

23. I communed privately all night
With the white-armed one of playful seduction.

24. I swore to you about what you blamed me for
By my head’s crown that it would cease if the disease let up.

25. Soon a band will return
To seek your lands however long it takes,

26. To cross your lands in a wide line of march
The desert cannot contain,

27. And whose foremost ranks drink destruction
To the dregs before the last drinks it.

28. Despair guides death, presenting it
With a gift of naked bodies piled in heaps,

29. Racing with the shadow of one who flees in haste.
When jostled, he stumbles and rights himself.

30. The brother of nobles will not bow to harm
Or exult when good fortune remains.

31. He has two days: a day for playing lightheartedly
And a day for the dust to cram the bone sockets.

32. Dazzling, he unveils the darknesses from himself,
And his ruddy glow dispels the shadows.

33. When exhaustion saps his strength,
He sees taking to bed as perishing.

34. War sufficed him when Despair
Bared her tents, so he raised his encampment.

35. When he marched against the lands of a people,
Death and panic girded them.

36. His steeds race like frightened prey,
Their hooves trampling the latecomers.

37. As the sword’s blade honed him true,
He was a famed, polished sword.