1. My feet are ransom for my mother and aunt
On the morn when the hounds bayed ferociously

2. I escaped a deliverance the like of which none has seen
As if I were a falcon at timely flight

3. A Khudari woman, her disheveled plumage
Drenched by days of ceaseless rain

4. As if we were ostriches thwarted by the village
With a horseman in hot pursuit

5. So whoever hopes for calm in Tameem
Has no cause in Tameem for stillness

6. When I heard the horses calling for battle
An oppressor peered out at me through the throat-slit

7. If I can, may no battle enmesh me
May its first light not espy me, nor the battlefield

8. May I have no ill-omened mourner woman
When the food of dependents comes morning and night

9. The Nahdi says to me, you ride pillion
But how can the mare, your mother, be a conveyance

10. He reminds me of the womb-tie between us
Though of old in Nahd we were lands apart

11. When I saw the horses jostling in throngs
I knew this day would be perilous and unjust