1. When the midnight raven spreads its wings over me
And covers me with the feathers of its shoulders

2. I toss and turn under the fold of the wing hoping
I may see the dawn peek through the feathers

3. I complain to God of the strange, foreign intention
Inheriting from time, its father, the trait of injustice

4. Greet every longing one with the sight of joy
While longing was for me a perpetual affliction

5. When the breast of the earth surged towards me, I stood firm
And if it didn’t surge towards me, I was lost among the wavering

6. The son of culture, like me, goes astray
So I make my injustice an example for oppressions

7. Or is injustice attributed to me because
I sought the heights before the solution of entwining

8. By the life of your father, I never hoped for wealth
For soft clothes and lavish banquets

9. Rather, I hoped for it for generosity
To captivate the soul of the fitting friend

10. The rhymes of poetry will cry tears from their lids
Over an Arab who was lost among non-Arabs

11. And I have no fault with time, I realized
Except that I was the last composer of poetry

12. I imagined it was Imru-ul-Qais and it left me
Miserable, with delegations from the foreigners visiting me

13. To you they cast me in shackles like slaves
Wrapped up in them and the bracelets

14. When the mirage dances, it provokes them
With the whiteness of the sand dunes accumulating

15. The morning breeze races in its course, it’s as if
Cowards have undertaken to flee in the dust of defeat

16. And nothing holds it back except the bridle it thinks
Is a snake turning in the thickets

17. It’s as if I fold up a parchment from the desert
On which the lines of writing differ

18. Be generous to me for yourself, not for the company
Who, when rescued, are like worthless coins

19. And he leaves me to distinguish with his sword
And if he reaches me, I have a skill in weapons

20. I love you for the sublime though I disobey you in some ways
And every generous one is inclined towards generosity

21. If your affection in what I have taken
Was plunder, then my share in it was plentiful

22. If you treat me with artifice, you treat one with a temper
Harsh towards enemies, difficult when angry

23. He has words like necklaces in a rising
But they are like branding irons on faces

24. It is hard for me to stop praising you, going astray
To praise people considered as beasts

25. They seek refuge from me with an Indian sword
While I hold them back with the ropes of spears

26. I praised Sura at dawn for its magnificence
It is the water that gives drink to every confused one

27. It is enough that the judge of the community is
A safety for the frightened and wealth for the destitute

28. Through him Islam was established in its settlement
And the party of disbelief is like ostriches

29. When his right hand tires in the belly of a warrior
The light of blessing hides in the veils

30. And the lines shine like shooting stars describing to me
The wrists of cheeks and gentle hands

31. Who can kiss the letters? For they are
The gates of torment, not whiteness of smiles

32. Say to the hands that wrote it to drive back an army
And bring together the dispersed and solve disputes

33. You inherited the heights from Taghlib the son of Wa’il
The exalted places from its ancient era

34. And I vie with you in glory, enviously
An ignorant one of the secrets of the exalted, not knowing

35. And this is a neighbor who is best for his people
Apart from the ram of an act from you that did not resist

36. And oh wonder! Hatem is attributed to generosity
Yet he is not of it in sublime and binding traits

37. Rather, the proverb coined regarding generosity and munificence
Returns to the clan of Ka’b and Hatem