1. For whom are the valiant youths with blades unsheathed,
whose streams in their right hands form abundant tributaries?

2. With them the tribe's warriors scowl severely,
their long spears having reached the clouds.

3. When war flares with tongues and sparks,
they are embers when the flints collide.

4. Among the sons of Banisha their dead are like
palm trees tilted over their sand dunes.

5. Horses, noble and colts, trample them,
their forelocks dripping blood on the sandy ground.

6. The clans of Nizar and Yaarub knew
when the conflict stirred that we were their ending.

7. Our spear-tips twist with piercing stabs
that our blades disguise with feints.

8. They soak the armor with eggs that then bend
from the blood, glowing red on their edges.

9. Are we not the Kinda band, for whom
the heights of glory are their meadows?

10. Their shields scent the camps' breeze with musk
wafting from their tomes in the evening.

11. And when foes throng, they call, "O vanquisher!"
so our heroes' features shine like beacons.

12. In iron armor they are recalcitrant lions
with upright morals their character traits.

13. On the chaotic day of war, paganism rises in us,
its patterns reverberating in our flanks.

14. We drag the train of gowns and spears,
the streets and excited throngs of all their callers.

15. By God! Those whom Kinana raised to ranks
where their plateaus cannot be scaled!

16. With their oaths are brilliant swords that make
severed enemy heads tilt to their sides.

17. Their young camels are called to them, necks craning
toward their masters at their halting places.

18. They kindle on the sand dune an ancient flame
that blazes while the horizons are still green.

19. When their racing camels charge the separated bands,
their strident cries melt their blades.

20. When we raise our rightly-guided banner,
we return it fluttering, gentle and pure.

21. Kings walk about it with faces that outshine
their swords, pages glittering like its tablets.

22. If they anchor it, the people are chaste.
And if they raise it, then the eagles are chaste.

23. Tongues deflect the sun's rays from them,
their tips melting with the signs upon them.

24. A prophetic resolve shines within them.
When war rages, their moaning calms it.

25. O clan of Abbas, you have in glory a chapter
that gurgles in the life of Nizar's daughter!

26. You are the lofty palms of Mudar's oasis,
fragrant through the nights' passage.

27. When Kaab donned the mantle of glory,
their foreheads were adorned by your pearls.

28. To you Allah's Messenger entrusted a nation
that set up the pole of guidance firmly.

29. So long as your roots are firm, if shaken,
and forgiven, if mistakes occur, it thrives.

30. The days did not shine except through your justice,
how excellent is the world with you as its pillars!

31. And in you are the traits of Qusayy. Indeed
the efforts of the Imam al-Qa'imi are their qualities.

32. And my poetry relates them to Babylon's realms
just as the weak related to my friends' cats.

33. You have faces that delight the eye. In them is a theater
where gazelles, made sleepless, were depicted.

34. And hands, around which the clouds wrap their waistbands,
spilling the torrents of wealth in their gestures.

35. Who will convey to Kinda's meadows that I
am in a verdant courtyard where the dew descends?

36. The dew roams upon my companions in its corners,
and my poems wander to it as narrators.

37. My conscience seethes with secrets of passion,
but few mistakes occur in good intentions.

38. Memory excites me, so I long for youths
who circle around my abode in the villages.

39. I conceal what, if spread, would incite the foe.
For in anxiety are aspirations with modest pebbles.

40. I recall days in Jarud's possession,
its margins veiled, wrathful and impetuous.

41. If Baghdad knew my mounts were thirsty,
it would have poured out its cisterns for me.

42. But it is subjugated in crisis. From afar,
its water-carriers babble confusedly to me.

43. Sound opinion made it a theater
upon azure carpets where its splendor shone.

44. My mounts, if they head to some land,
arrive unsuspected, their tags unnoticed.

45. They repel the affliction of want wherever it turns
and deny the cheeks of pebbles their wrinkles.

46. So it is to you my praises incline,
and to you alone my songs carry their reins.