1. I have curbed some of my aspirations,
And refrained from my impetuous self,

2. After youth roamed with my companions,
And soared to distant horizons.

3. Twenty languorous years passed in idleness,
Followed by two sorrowful ones that weighed down my pace.

4. An era where the wing shrinks back to youth
When I attained it, I lowered my wing.

5. I turn away in asceticism from the pleasing spectacle,
And resist my pleasure with comfort.

6. Are the days with loved ones a return
To pastures where we shared confidences and joys?

7. It suffices you from our breaths and tears
That you be watered after us and relax.

8. How often has a life with you had a gentle breeze
Like water flowing gently on spread out sands.

9. And infatuations that awakened, like the rays of dawn,
Passion in Khazami with intimacy and first meetings.

10. How many in you have cheerful features or love-sick,
Lowering their eyes or bright-eyed.

11. Passion watered the side of the cloud and its rain,
And watered the descending gifts on its side the wind.

12. One day it cheers this one from that sadness,
And travels to cheer another from spirits.

13. How often its wild animals have intended me
And I have stayed awake for a flashing lightning.

14. I took shelter from a windless calm to it
A sheltered oasis that torments the overtired.

15. Days in the dyeing of my youth and my vigor
To concord and my morning rise and return.

16. My people are the distinguished Banu Ma'ad
Including both elucidator and inspirer.

17. The forerunners to glory and superiorities
And the victors over benevolence and clemency.

18. They took away the glory of honor, then bid farewell
Mockingly to ascent and rising.

19. Frowning with wrath and in pleasure
However you wish of bright faces in the morning.

20. They inherited loftiness through ancestry and then
With finest spears and thrusts of lances.

21. And guiding destriers with slender bodies as if they are
Eagles under a sparkling coat of mail.

22. Sometimes openly attacking in the night and sometimes
Raiding every morning.

23. There shone in my lineage an ancestral excellence
In a towering position, bare of spearheads.

24. Belonging to the best roots of nobility
Not subdivisions and side branches.

25. And my father who reaped necks with his sword
In every day of clash and goring.

26. The sun was given back to him, its light
Bringing morning from a distance of dawn.

27. Ask about him on the day of Zubair, stirring
Prancing between disturbances and horrors.

28. And ask about the two battle lines, his roar
Destroyed the ram of Umayyah butting.

29. And ask the drinkers of the Euphrates, they
Struck with hands stretched out aggressively.

30. How many forcibly stripped garments that day
And sacrosanct households violated.

31. And shining white faces
Forever inspiring the praises of eulogizers.

32. Whoever compares himself to such nobility
Then he has weighed mountains against fantasies.

33. I have said to the enemy aggrieving me with his enmity:
Wait, an adept fighter is not hasty.

34. So beware if my lightnings pour upon you
And beware if my winds blow upon you.

35. Morning arrived and split every darkness
And the roar ascended silencing every barking.

36. I am the one whom you knew in combat
With sharp fangs and skilled in conflict.

37. And I refused to give the enemies my reins
Or for disgrace to run its course upon my morals.

38. After I placed myself in the paths of loftiness
And harmed the enemies by prolonged struggle.

39. And haughtily snatched from the caliphate moments
Of the aspiration of each obstinate ambitious one.

40. And in recent years I reformed my family
So I delegated their corrupt ones to rectify.

41. With an awe that spread without arrogance
And firmness that subjugated without wounds.

42. Clemency like the fringes of a cloak and beneath it
Might that pounds the shafts of spears.

43. If I overcome them then it is no wonder
When uncertainties overcome elucidations.

44. Now I praise without thanks to a benefactor
If I were equitable, he would be among my praisers.

45. Far from a time that subjected me to its calamities
And amidst deep water I reached peril.

46. Do not blame me if I accept disgrace
That twists my hand and turns back my aspirations.

47. Without the ammunition of regiments, they pass their running
The trudging camels of every venturesome gambler.

48. Necks over the necks of students urging them
Ambitions that assumed the habits of success.

49. I am a stranger in the land behind the judge of loftiness
Away from my homeland and meadows.

50. More desirous to me than lasting bliss for me
And sweeter than bounties showered upon me.

51. I was made to drink brackish water by
The hand of humiliation mixed with salts.

52. Let me risk my life though
Men’s pursuit is honor, lighting fires.

53. Either meeting the king by force
Or as Ibn Hujr met by the hand of the archer.