1. A poem locked in restraint
Or have you visited our dwellings, now desolate?

2. Disheveled are you - they recalled their bounty
And terrified, did you chance upon their safety?

3. They pitched camp, each valley is a footprint
Each cheek has a forearm that bends

4. You harbored naught but sorrow for them
Perchance your forgiveness was but sorrow

5. O you whose eyes contract when you saw
A gleam, so the lightning seemed watchful

6. Open your eyelids, our visitor
Has pulled down his veil and bared his teeth

7. Highest are you in your distance, blaming
Folding the plains, alone in sadness

8. Grant me your aloofness, you left it generously
Why then does your faith leave cowardice?

9. Still you unite opposites
Until you united injustice and benefaction

10. Great is the difference between your hindrance amidst us
In al-Mana, and your connection in the bend of ad-Dahna

11. O night of the full moon's grace
If only the sun had tarried from us

12. Their parting would gather us
Until, when convened, we would disperse

13. We stayed at ad-Dahna, drinking from
Its withered ground, its drought eats away at us

14. And at al-Mana, immaculate abodes
With fertility, bees sip nectar and clarified butter

15. Pure water, untainted by wine
Musk without pounding, meaningless

16. You captivated hearts, so in their fingers
Its blood shows you it was henna

17. Her glances and stance grew intense
Did you teach the spear to stab?

18. I fear to name the forearms
And say: "The place of Zainab is Lubna"

19. And yet I see, though the eye forgets
A meadow that recalls sadness

20. There we were, in the year of passion, a trunk
Days of nothingness like we were!

21. The rapture of youth, and he took from my body
The onslaught of tribulations from that rapture

22. An enclosure that denied after recognition
The doves wept there as they had sung

23. Our she-camels shied from it
As though the humans were replaced by Jinn

24. We would lean, surrendering to it
Yet today we surrendered without bending

25. Will you deny, and you are distant
Watering the lowliest of your flock?

26. If one from watchfulness visits your abode
Greet him, and if he did not visit, yearn!

27. The hidden flags are neglected
With stupidity, its pole scorned from flagging

28. No stealthy coward milked it
I gathered its bounty, the hand of one strong-armed

29. Burdened, in custody of the innocent
Falling heavily in my hand and weight

30. Like a seed, time preserved it
In its sheath, unlike what it destroyed

31. Mute, hiding its tinkling, then when
It bleated at the parting of forelocks, it bleated

32. Another she-camel walks proudly, erected
Plunging in it, you'd think it eyeliner

33. A rain cloud passed for it,
Successors of a wet nurse through it are sated

34. The foot walks on it, steady,
What its branch embraces of branches

35. She gathered and lengthened what she sought and went
On her way, so I left her growth as fodder

36. The chambers walk through it, intertwining with it
Some emerging, deemed a fortress

37. The living thronged it, lodging
Away from it, so it is not herded or harvested

38. They forbade, at the fringes of the spear
Its dangling grass and the yielding

39. I fed it to my camels who were satiated by it
A herdsman whose burnous is warm

40. And a brother whose nature I tested
And I rewarded it with a donation or produce

41. Its mirror is my face when it yellows
Its hand and strength when it enriches

42. Its limbs cast it aside, cold
While its heart blazes, kindling

43. It shows me affection, and it angers him
My grace upon it, so the rift shows

44. I tamed it and watched it
To regain through my pledge the loss

45. Sound the lutes of estrangement to me
For after me, the years will sound

46. Were it not for the son of Ayyub,
The mother of loyalty would not have birthed, perfected a son

47. None remained to whom a hand praises
A necklace, but one came, unique

48. I was once peerless, unfit for a brother
For a time, then through his affection became a pair

49. I praise the world for what it granted me
Of sweetness and bliss from it

50. And besides it, I struggled with its sorrows
The rubbing of the stripped flank is disgraced

51. Burdensome, I accommodated it as though my hands
Patched its nature with cracklings

52. And I turned these people's faces
Dorsal and the secrets of their hearts ventral

53. I found him most faithful of them
Palmfuls and most forgiving of offense, eyelid

54. And most loving in spreading repute
And most veiling towards a wink

55. By God, from it and clarity a brother
The era grew wise through it, though mad

56. Through Muhammad were the forces of my hope unbound
My hopes were shepherded and fattened

57. The most high rider on a bed
In which he trains its rugged mounts

58. Tired in pursuing glory, gathering it
From here and there and here and there

59. Enamored with perfection, no eye upon
Its estrangement rested or slept

60. If he spoke, actions verified him, if
He gave, despite his paucity he sufficed

61. Debauchery does not cling to what he strove for
From his gown, dragging tail or train

62. Tolerant in glory, preceding
What the most high established, so he likewise did

63. As though for seekers of his goal
In merit he shut before it, on deposit

64. His fingers were eloquent in an opening
In scripture, its phrasing encapsulated meaning

65. The clarion voices of eloquence were not satisfied
For their elocution to divulge secrets

66. He found progress and arms through it
The day of battle, and found no match

67. They retreated backwards, routed,
Strides I made you a fortress below it

68. I found your affection and uprightness
A relief upon it, my ribs bend

69. You burdened me to support it irresistibly
And you can see my probity suffices

70. I carried your kindness to me on a
Neck unbending, to carry gifting

71. So may every traveller reward you
Roaming lands and exploring dunes

72. A digger from every problem
An asker requiring no permission

73. From every house amongst your homes
Incapable, failing the text

74. Watered yet unseen, so the hearer
Of its voice, his eye envies the ear

75. Marked by you, its oddities
If borrowed, we would have recognized it

76. I think ill, though it is beneficent
Unlike the sinister, good of thought