1. I raised my voice to call them, and they saw
Upon their shoulders pieces of worn out garments.

2. Had it not been for modesty, I would have shaken my head in defeat
When she bared her teeth, their edges boiled over.

3. Her distant tooth cracks looked like
The morsels of Luqman resembling a lizard.

4. When the night prowlers looked into them, they tossed and turned;
Their anklets rattled in horror of her sharp canines.

5. When the sun saw them, the gleam of her teeth
Was like one who died before nightfall, robbed of his senses.

6. The foes wished you were dead before her;
They see in her great harm upon you, worse than murder.

7. You see around her chicks as though they
Crouched around a mother of four, newly hatched.

8. She is a thin, gray buzzard; whoever sees what's in her
Resembles, though he be fifty, a child.

9. When they fed her fat, her face came
With the eyes of an old woman from Uraina or Ukal.

10. A scowling, saffron-dyed she-camel, her eye takes
Half a saucer of kohl when she uses makeup.

11. I am of a people whose ablutions require
The broth of a house rat - they wash with that!

12. Soap has not found our blood
As curative as honey from bee hives.