1. Would that I knew, do the dwellings inform me with certainty
About their people, whither they went?

2. Griefs have stirred you so nothing of them remains
Except every day anguish and remembrance.

3. The living answer not him who is no longer living,
And news is blind save to him who is present.

4. A home of the living whose date has receded in the past,
After its civilization it remained barren and they too became barren.

5. They encountered mischances of fate unforeseen
After they gave succor for years and went into exile.

6. So it is as though from the mention of them
I was imbued with wine from a chalice of Palestine.

7. She grew to maturity in the hills, far from the hands of vintners
For years, unassailed by the tasters.

8. So she is radiant, leaving the one who beholds her distraught
Between the redness in her eyes and the pallor.

9. War prevented a tryst with Salma, so my heart,
Were it to be given the choice, would be outraged.

10. She turned aside from her passion and journeyed with a roving,
Hard life, a tribe wandering without cease.

11. Many a camel, when it enters the land of a people
Its longings escort it, bleating and bellowing.

12. A wild creature whom its mother bore in the wilderness,
Never far from it is its plaintive crying.

13. Nothing can console the friend when the lightning of his abode
Is shrouded in darkness by a barren, rugged waste.

14. My heart clings to the memory of that encampment, but how
Can the far-shooting arrow attain the distant mark?

15. A garden in full flower in the spring,
With torrents streaming over its banks.

16. Men despaired of enjoying its shelter,
Yet it made its meadows green with the rains.

17. She is an enchantress adopting every guise
As ornament, each time the day wanes.

18. Once I grew intoxicated with the swaying of a bare,
Graceful arm, gleaming after its mantle slipped.

19. I would ransom the two captives forever from their bonds
So the archer might be tasked with their deliverance.

20. The firm, the well-knit, his shoulders were ennobled
In the thickets of his ribcage by knotted scars

21. And when he turned his back, his leanness was adorned
By the hide, impervious to branding iron and sealed.

22. His physique welded together; if a crier's voice
Startled him, he seemed molded of molten metal.

23. When he surged forward, his smoothness was ornamented by stripes
Like the trunk immune from the woodcutter's ax.

24. Carried by a hand that hurls without caution
On the fury of an arm impervious to stumbling.

25. Lionesses whose hooves are silent,
No spreading is seen in their forelegs.

26. Their hides are soaked by the water of the torrents,
Greenish, tending toward blackness.

27. The flesh parts from their lips, revealign sharp,
Gleaming incisors, as the strings are pulled taut.

28. The lute rose up, the heart strings quivered within,
Among gut strings where veils hang.

29. Ribs that seem, when he turned his back,
To flash with each rib a crescent moon.

30. Then the firm breast rose, poised
Where horsemen find their backbone.

31. He is a stallion, more dusky than the blackest night,
Bare of covering, a cave with no doors.

32. We gained him by barter, and it was said
He is the swiftest of a noble stock.

33. And there the reddish mares glanced
With a radiance among them and fresh greenness.

34. It was as though each one were but a part
Until the flesh and little bellies appeared.

35. We escorted our boy above the hill's rim,
And gestured, then said, 'Whither did they point?'

36. Some came slowly toward us, so we said
'Grant us peace or hasten to flee!'

37. The game took fright but then came to a halt
When they were convinced by what their eyes conveyed,

38. Fleeing but unable to see.
Yet flight cannot save from destiny.

39. Then he swam out toward the fleeing beasts,
A swimmer, after his setting like the moon obscured.

40. With prominent throat, snorting, shaking off
The cut reeds, his nostrils scattering spray.

41. They bolted from the meadow of his pool,
And the dust cleared from their backs.

42. With a thick forelock, as though his two lips
Were the shining new moon.

43. With a tongue like the yellow oriole,
Polished by the dew, darting out sparks.

44. Men claim the best of Quraysh,
Noble when pedigrees are recounted,

45. Are the offspring of Harb and ‘Amir ibn Lu’ayy -
So the cream of the noble and the free are brought low.

46. Who were born from wombs that engender
The cream of the free and noble.

47. And if the fires of war flare up,
They kindle their own war fires and so enrage them.

48. And if the spring shrinks back the revive
Those who follow them and give refuge to those they protect.

49. So they are a people staunch and active,
When calamities try men and test reports.

50. The upholders of right when mankind is laid low
And the noblest by whom reputations are protected.

51. They drove away humiliation, so it is far removed from them,
It has no place wherever they dwell.

52. And glory refused except to ally itself with a people
Other than them, so it will go wherever they go.