1. With languishing eyes I was led to youth
Led to another sweet of scent

2. How can it be with my eyes which languished for her
When I met her, her eyelids would die

3. A crooked, bending, hundred fathoms deep
Wallowing in the mirage’s sand dunes

4. And a night of flocks descending from highland
Stirred by the anklets’ bells, their hosts

5. I sensed the essence of the flocks when they camped
On the ground, hosts sprawling helpless

6. As if the women’s chatter were Anbati
Their dialects mingling as they walked

7. A lone man friendly with the wasteland prattled
Throwing down his rags and belongings

8. As if it were men of Da’riya beneath it
Feathers of ostriches, soiled by its gloom

9. And a long night for the watchman
Lasting days, its darkness hard to endure

10. I positioned tall necks that seemed drunk
Scolded at times, at others coaxed gently

11. And blackened by the darkness of night I probed it
Till daybreak shone white on its garb

12. As if two she-camels stabbed by me
With necks of slenderwood, lasting is its gloom

13. I positioned adjoining necks trampled by raiders
Till their innocence shone brightly

14. None scarred the backs like a shirt of scales
Bearing sorrow of days gone by, painful its bleakness

15. Whose loyalty was tempted by every companion
Till only the bone of peace remained nourishing

16. An emigrant who tasked myself and my she-camel
With roasts, deliciously poisonous their choicest bits

17. For they cure anxiety when the visitor comes
To vigils, resolute the will of their hosts

18. And a red night of winter I killed
Sheltered from the cold, its dog gives her no peace

19. Biting at the fire, those who tend it
When the dog’s coat comes from it, hellish

20. I made the tent’s rug for the seeker of lodging
With a slap releasing its very core

21. We took cover, three of us beneath the tent folds
The boiling inside magnifies the vanquished

22. Would that the Commander of the Faithful
Had attained the watchman spirits’ signal

23. A man whose resolve night does not break
And who attains all wants, only its pith

24. With a bucket undisturbed but by its milker
Halfway through a prayer still slowly pouring

25. The land belongs to none but its four cubits
When darkest night beckons with its howl

26. His worries at night don’t wane for riders
Except when its totality is undisclosed

27. And a pitch black night whose burden I carried
On slow, foreboding mounts, bleak their affair

28. I probed the darkness until a pillar lit it
With shining whiteness squeezing it

29. And a pitch black night balanced is its darkness
To us the same, its horizons or its clouds

30. As if it tied together there nights and days
And a darkness as black as can be, bleak its expanse

31. When we hope for its end, there accumulates for it
A lantern with colored light, ample its gleam

32. For such is the darkness of long nights when
Its gloom and density come upon us

33. When I say to the guards, “Is my night done?
Has morning drawn near or do stars adorn its expanse?”

34. They say, “It will not abate, ever gloomy its continuity”
Would that I were in the place of the forty

35. With my thigh plainly marked by its talons
I found my brother Najdah and mourned him

36. As fate’s blows can be so cruel
He defended him from me, sword in hand

37. Along with his sword, all of earth’s pebbles assailing