1. I still wander from house to house with purpose
Until I came upon Nu’man’s houses

2. In al-Hira al-Bayda, where there gathered
The pillars of Imād and the ropes of A‘ṭān

3. Its domes bear witness to the merit of those who raised them
And its structure shows the merit of the builder

4. Of no use to the departed, even if there remained for them
Tracks made immortal for an ephemeral lifetime

5. And I saw the unintelligible speech of bygone days
Rendered incomprehensible to the articulate speaker

6. The eyes still retain their share, but now
The ears have no share in it today

7. And I came to know, among the houses of Banū Muḥarriq,
The shelter of the villages and the fireplaces

8. And the place where they captured the shy ostriches
And the tracts where they dragged the tent ropes

9. And I saw the racetracks for horses
And the lairs of lions for their cubs

10. The attackers of kings, their domes
And those who struck the crowns

11. And it is as though, on the day of the raid, there emerges from them
The lion of the ground and the black lions of the thickets

12. And indeed I saw in the monastery of Hind a house
Painful from poverty and disasters

13. It surrendered like one listening to threats—its supporters disappeared
And it was devoid of aides

14. The guideposts bowed down its parapets
In the manner of a brisk she-camel whose nose ring is pulled

15. Or like delegations who saw the whip of a caliph
So they bent their necks low

16. And I remembered its racetrack in its heyday
Before its time was sold for another time

17. And because of what it endures of humiliation, it shed
The girdle, slowly submitting

18. O shortened resting place of gazelles! Time has changed you
Until you became a den of little gazelles

19. And a playground for all mankind—time has erased them
And so you became a playground for jinn

20. From every house, your porch shades
Singing slave girls heedless of neighbors

21. You might become a rest area and an overnight stay
For the most graceful son of kings, loud and unruly

22. The Euphrates enters your courtyard with its floods
While you get your share of drinking and irrigation from it

23. And I stood asking some parts of it about others
And they answered me with muteness, without speech

24. My sighs led me to shed tears
Had not my anguish led to acquiescence

25. Tears flow and the young man’s anguish subsides
And he sleeps after his companions separate

26. The musky breaths thinks its soil
Is the perfume of the fragrant sweet basil

27. And it is as though the merchants spread out a new garment
Which the winds blew onto spear shafts

28. Water like coat of mail, burnished by the morning light
And drops shaken by the gentle, affectionate breeze

29. The robes of kings—Jaẓīma threw them between them
While eras vary for those who give warning

30. Expelling them like the way time expels dear ones
And for safekeeping among the people of the fortresses

31. Time sniffed them out to neigh about them
And set their dwellings among the date palms

32. And like the uproar of a storm that disturbed them
Transporting their domes from the highlands

33. And it crackled against the cities with its lightnings
Commotion to rattle their pillars

34. And it turned transferred to the son of Dhū Yazan
Shedding its quivers upon the scabbards

35. It tore through the thickets of poised spears and stirred up
After safety, the settlements of Ḍuḥyān

36. Time snorted at them, so they separated
And departed from the lands and homelands