1. Insist on the best of what is proper and make
Its surplus a favor over bad bargaining.

2. And know that binding happens where cheating thrives,
While winning happens where one is bound.

3. If you had likened the guarantees of the pilgrim
To a star, it would neither twist nor wind.

4. No sin on its rider
Of a banner that fails, or ground that wanders.

5. If you were not the one that
The length of travel appointed,

6. It is the one that never wavered.
As if it were a jinniya under the darkness,

7. Its rider a star that descended on its back.
It does not tread the ground even when eased

8. By the tread of one who stomps, except what it steps over.
As if its four legs were of such lightness

9. That they were one in motion when they mingled.
It runs and strikes its ear with its hand,

10. As if stipulating with its braids.
It sifts the stout from its signs,

11. The elite of what was left by them in loss and gain.
It was not roughed up by the scent of its mother,

12. The crossbreeds of horses or sneers of camels.
It has from the Arabs a fitting leanness

13. That suffices without branding with hot iron.
Bare, were it not for widespread forelock

14. You would say a smooth braided rope.
With a noseband as if you folded a cloak

15. And reins as if you spread out a carpet.
It is the one you rode happily upon,

16. And reached after five the ultimate happiness.
And it passed the night with the neighbors grazing

17. At the plants of the pasture and split mountains.
And gazelles from the meadows of sand, since

18. Bashfulness was accustomed upon them, unwiped.
Whites of gentle, polished hides - if you marked

19. Among them, no stigma would be marked.
Their faces and hands were not made common

20. In the fervor of fire or hot embers.
The valley of Ghada, they sleep around it in the morning,

21. The kind of journey, the Yemeni, wrapped.
As if a garden roamed by the morning breeze,

22. Their stirrings competing over condition.
You came upon them and the night had not parted,

23. Nor had the bracelet of Aldebaran slipped.
My heart recited by them a misguidance,

24. I implore you by the settlements, a groomed camel.
And among them a doe, almost mature,

25. Which did not recognize me before as a foundling.
It doubled its coat when it was exposed,

26. A gray smooth-tailed hyena.
When I inserted a hand like a crescent moon

27. Into its mouth, it ground the teeth of a comb.
It drove me away while turning aside

28. When it read a line of gray hair on my temple and cheek.
It said you grew old and singing turned sullen,

29. You must be gathered, or else be tied down.
The cups of the changing of fate crept up on me

30. Evil-omened, and they tore me and pulverized me.
And bags pulled me in by the gray hair

31. And they did not adorn me while in their prime.
And how much I hit and then cast amiss,

32. So guide me to the hits from the misses!
And a friend whose wound I failed to probe

33. And refrained from binding dressing and pad.
I carried him not complaining of his weight

34. Lest you say, biased or stipulating.
And like gravel, a rhyme I made rugged,

35. If it faced the throat of one hoarse, it would rasp.
I make it hear, requesting approval from it,

36. Deaf, it hears only what angers it.
It eats my praise and reproach together,

37. Sweet and bitter, chewing and drawing out.
It eats it in humiliation, obligated to it,

38. So it does not care, fallen one, how it was picked up!
If only the clan of Abd al-Rahim would remain

39. For me from the honor of life, even a little.
Bestowers of their land’s fruits

40. Whether the year was fertile upon them or arid.
And preventers only of their neighbor’s nose,

41. Neither adhering to lineage, nor libertines.
Finding refuge among them, while prohibited sanctuary,

42. If he attributed himself to their name, even if not attributed.
Lords of glory, and if you measured by them

43. You would make their lord exceed in superior virtue.
Al-Husayn came and took their ideals as model,

44. Then excelled, making those spots more.
He disdains that you raise him through inheritance,

45. The loftiness that did not raise him nor debase him.
Like a lion, no morsel is sweet to him

46. Unless he seizes it in his palm and gathers it.
He extends to the pinnacle of glory a hand

47. That the horizons recede from where it extends.
Your right hand, if you hasten it

48. With generosity, redeems the right hand of every grasping destitute.
He gives to one requesting and is stingy to one abundant,

49. For you thought well, and he despaired.
The hand of the stingy is but depravity,

50. Whenever it appears prominent, say it is covered!
And one who denied your right, you did not burden him

51. With loyalty or adorn him.
You loaned to him - if the servant were to thank a hand,

52. He would cover it with ingratitude and erase it!
If you wished after the error of days in his

53. Abstention, you could repay him when he fell.
Deception deluded you about him when

54. Not everyone who beholds confusion gropes!
You were nothing but a settled mountain, and he

55. Was none but an arrow of evil flung.
Listen! For the reports of glory are not preferred

56. Except rarely, while they about you are precise.
Am I in describing you anything but a conveyor

57. Dictating your traits to me while I inscribe?
Familiars - were it not for you I would not be with them -

58. Their restraint did not part with a attached bit.
Every scout that did not part from a battalion

59. Whose toe is a shoe and whose side a brand.
How many a neck, while it has a collar,

60. And how many ears listen while they are earrings!
I tame it, not wearing myself out, and

61. None of my reward by your blessing fails or is lost.
Every day Qasim divides the beauty with it,

62. More fairly to others and to my poetry he apportions.
Be like the apathetic before you, but he

63. When goodness was energetic to poetry, became energetic.