1. Abu Hilal, I am accustomed to wars,
My cloak is patched and my arrows sharp.

2. Abu Hilal, bring me an inexperienced lad,
For the sky of Bahila is stubborn as rock.

3. When the son of Kushkush sees me,
He takes cover or his country becomes too narrow.

4. And I am bitter in war, and sometimes
I am easy when my friend is affectionate.

5. I gave the son of Ad-Dalimi a sharp poet,
And I led the son of Nuhayya while fetters were led.

6. So I live without fearing the enmity of Mujlib,
God’s hand protects me and my tongue harvests.

7. I am the son of kings of non-Arabs broken down upon me
While my pillar among the settled peoples stands erect.

8. I proposed but the ignoble did not give me his daughter,
And I grew old but a protector’s care did not shelter my youth.

9. It is enough for you that for sixty pilgrimages
I defeat the demons of enemies and almost vanquish them.

10. When war turns its face away from me,
No doors are closed to me.

11. I have not ceased being in the freshness of youth that is past
And in old age what I seek is attained and wanted.

12. I am the most generous of visitors who come,
And sometimes I seek the Commander of the Faithful and am bountiful.

13. How strange that the son of Kushkush dares to attack me
With a Kunduri camel whose covering is gray hair!

14. Abu Kushkush, when you knew my poems
You sharpened against them your brown palm sticks.

15. You are the son of a picker-up of date pits; you know him well,
Your grandfather was a Zanji - ashes was his father!

16. He was a slave of Qushayri for a time.
Miserable is the lad whose hands are his livelihood!

17. The Ka’bi says to him in private,
“Your cure, O son of the dissolute, is struggle.”

18. So do not buy a Zanji; you will prosper
With a red one, for the Zanji is recalcitrant to you.

19. Abu Kushkush, you matched Zayd in his deed
While you are for another, and the despicable is customary.

20. So you hoped to have power over them,
But far-fetched is the notion of the son of Kulayq as establishment!

21. By my life, you were wrong in your opinion of them,
Not everything one desires meets with attainment.

22. Give up likening your slumber to them, for it is only
A dream, and slumber will not benefit you.

23. The King despised the children of adultery begotten by an effeminate;
Their sickness made them contemptible and envious.

24. They did not defend him out of desire for his recovery,
But the children of adultery are for everlasting.

25. Abu Kushkush, do not claim any kinship between us;
You know, and recognizing the ugly is proper conduct.

26. You belong to the children of adultery; you are one of them.
You have no share among the people of purity and power.

27. For the chiefs of children of adultery there is advantage
Over you, so do not persist and your heart has perception.

28. Not every child of adultery can attain
What the fathers of children of adultery attain in generosity.

29. Abu Hilal, among you is a tribe to be consulted,
The scum of districts, flat-nosed, with shaggy hair.

30. Abu Hilal, return A’bd Al-Hayy; they
Are shaggy-haired, feeding on the property of the generous.

31. The evil of children of adultery has spread among them
Even if the blackness in the full moon spreads.

32. Children of Kushkush, cover the defects of women
Who attack more and more and will be assaulted.

33. Daughters, wives, a sister, and an aunt
With them - how they pierce with sharp tongues!

34. Our noble women have dwindled after pardoning
And there is no end to the eyes of the son of Kulayq.

35. And Mushfiqah felt pity for me about Kushkush’s fledgling,
So I said to her, “Corruption remains for it.”

36. There is no corruption for his people in the death of the son of Kulayq,
But in survival there is corruption.

37. He invited me but I did not respond to the voice of the son of Kushkush
To marry his sisters, and I bear grudges.

38. So I said to him, “With me are four
Who are tough, and I have no cage for them.”

39. You have the peacock of Abyssinia for its lord;
Favors are flowers - enjoy them!

40. A Zanji coupled with you, and your mother was a Salifa
With leprosy - do not hunt them and get hunted!

41. So you came like a mule, begotten wrongly, between
A she-ass and a donkey whose nose-ring was removed.

42. When his slave-girls bray, their lord is affectionate to them;
They have a private part, and he has intercourse!