1. The lightning flashed and the clouds gathered, sheltering the solitary dwellings,
My companions wept and my camels knelt down.

2. I said to them, dispirited as the tears
Poured down over the saddlebags:

3. “Do you weep out of sadness? But crying
Does not befit the eyes of men.

4. With what sorrows of love are you now struck down?”
They replied, with this painful malady:

5. “We feel the same as they do, this misery,
Though I don’t care about misery.”

6. “Shall I smell the wind high aloft,
While my family lie in their graves and I have no one?

7. My best men among both settled folk and nomads
Are gone, and their abodes lie empty.

8. So honor him whose uncles were
Of Quraysh, whose maternal uncles were Hilal,

9. And those houses God built
On tall columns among the lofty Nizar.

10. With them and myself I long to ascend
The heights, to be saved from lowly disgrace,

11. Bowed down by passion for them, my zeal
Is for them, to them my questions turn.

12. How often an empty trace has vexed me,
Driving me to a trace where camps once were!

13. Time in its narrowness has turned my hope
Away from all I long for;

14. And put forward against me a band
Of vile men, evil-doing warriors,

15. So I turned my hand from them when I saw
They had hands that were miserly in giving.

16. Base-minded neighbors who will not be noblemen
Until they leave that baseness behind!

17. Glory will brand me--my right hand seizing booty,
My left hand bestowing gifts--

18. And swords will clash around me from a company
Of hot-blooded youths with hands that give freely,

19. Until the brows of the champions stoop to the ground
That my feet have trampled underfoot.”