1. Have you not seen how insomnia kept me from my bed,
As worries, though joyful, stole upon me?

2. And how often a need has confronted me, but I endured it
With both my palms, after this day I shall not endure it.

3. When people are gathered in their homes,
Behind me are the remains of an old encampment.

4. Are we not the lords of a people and a nation,
Their successors, and from us came their messenger?

5. Kings whom people follow,
To us have come their needs and their envoys.

6. When a land grows too small for a people, we are seen
Possessing the horizon from end to end.

7. You scooped with a bucket that fills half the earth,
Yet the best well-rope is one made of palm-fibre.

8. Upon a Nabataean of the people of Hauran dawned
One marked of hand, a wretched remnant.

9. And I am the star for which a people were tormented,
Their dwellings vanished and their palms vanished.

10. The dim-witted pen-pusher went astray
Like the she-camel of Thamud when her foal was taken.

11. He who wails to me, he and his people
Will hear from me a call that splits rocks.

12. When the straying one is killed, his blood-price
Falls on Tayy, who must pay for his slain one.