1. Have the poets left any ruins from Tadmor?
Or have you recognized the abode after imagining it?

2. O Abila's abode, speak with yearning,
And bid good morning to Abila's abode and be safe!

3. I halted my she-camel there as if
She were a young, yearning doe.

4. Abila melts with yearning, and our people
With sorrow, then silence, then being wrapped up.

5. I greeted ruins whose antiquity was powerful
And more desolate after Umm Al-Hatham.

6. It descended upon the land of visitors, so it became
Difficult for me, the seeker, daughter of Makram!

7. I tied it, though it was forbidden, and killed its people
Supposedly - by your father's life - it is no mere claim!

8. You alighted, so think none other than me
To have your station, O beloved, honored one!

9. How are the graves when their people have settled
With two maidservants while our people remain with the boy slaves?

10. If you intend to part, then your mounts
Are saddled in the dark night.

11. What alarmed me were only the bundles of its people
Amidst the abodes pouring down love of the amorous crooner.

12. In it are two and forty waterskins
As black as the hidden crow, grey-necked.

13. As it cries with pure, clear late afternoon
Sweet, kissing, pleasant taste.

14. As if a merchant's carafile with anklets
Whose bracelets reached you from the mouth.

15. Or a garden the April rains included whose plants
A little rain without hail did not teach.

16. It lavished upon it each free, noble she-camel
Leaving every small coin like a dirham.

17. Pouring down and dripping, so every evening
Water flows upon it, not having become stagnant.

18. Flies buzz in it, so it has no one spending the night
Warbling as the drinker, singing, does.

19. Jesting, scratching its forearm with its forearm,
The cup of wine set to the short-wicked lamp.

20. You spend the evening and morning atop a saddlecloth
While I spent the night atop an unsaddled, bridled camel.

21. My saddlecloth is a saddle on a high-bred she-camel
Whose straps are fine, of a superior binder.

22. Will an ungrateful she-camel convey me to its abode
Cursed with deprived wine, broken?

23. A barefoot, Bedouin, Zayyafa she-camel
Who crashes into the ankles with a Meetham shoe?

24. It's as if in the evening it crashes into the ankles
With something near, between the two nostrils, docked.

25. It shelters the ostrich chicks as a Yemeni
Old soul shelters a foreign babbler.

26. It follows the smallness of its head as if
A howdah upon a bier having tents.

27. An ostrich returning at dusk to lay its eggs
Like an Abyssinian slave of long loose hair.

28. It drank from Duhur well, so it became
A versa who flees from the pastures of Dalam.

29. It's as if it moves away with its side from
An unsaddled donkey's braying in the evening, distressed,

30. A wild donkey, whenever she turns to it
It gets angry, guarding with its hands and mouth.

31. It mounted the edge like it mounted
A hollow cane, consumed, compressed.

32. It's as if it were a fox or a jackal, tied up,
The firewood piled around a cooking pot's sides.

33. Snarling from the nostrils of an angry, daring,
Zayyafa, like the battered Phoenician.

34. If you hide the waterskin from me, then I
Am content with the taking of the appeased knight.

35. Praise me with what you know, for I
Am forgiving when I'm not wronged,

36. But if I'm wronged, then my wrong is grim
Bitter tasting like aloe juice.

37. I drank some wine after
The Pleiades set with the known rising of Canopus,

38. From a yellow bottle with a handle
Paired with a flower at its side, bruised.

39. When I drink, I'm a consumer
Of my money and honor, ample, untouched.

40. And when I become sober, I do not neglect generosity,
As you know my noble traits and generosity,

41. By the divorce of a singing slave-girl I left
Her anklet jangling as the fox's cleft jaw.

42. My hands outstripped hers, striking suddenly
With a penetrating, sprinkling blow, intense red.

43. Why not ask the horses, O Malik's daughter,
If you are ignorant of what you do not know,

44. As I still ride a galloping saddle
A doe the Pleiades glance at, marked with beauty spots?

45. One moment shedding clothes for spearing, another
Seeking the harvest of the short, plump ear.

46. The one who witnessed the fray will tell you that I
Plunge into the melée and pardon at the spoils of war,

47. A mailed warrior the Pleiades dislike fighting
Neither persisting in flight nor surrendering.

48. My hands lavished upon him a sudden deadly blow
With a balanced, sincere-hilted Indian sword,

49. A hero whose clothes seem to be in a saddlebag
Not paired like Saturday’s sandals,

50. O ewe, what hunting of one made sacred to me
And forbidden to me - would that she were not forbidden!

51. So I sent my slave girl and said to her, “Go
And find out news of her for me and know!”

52. She said, “I saw among the enemies a lamb,
And the ewe is attainable by one who covets.”

53. I warned ‘Amr, ungrateful for my bounty,
And ingratitude corrupts the soul of the benefactor.

54. I remembered my uncle’s bequest at dawn
As the lips contracted from the clear mouth,

55. In the fervor of war which the champions do not complain of
Its tribulations other than with moans.

56. When they avoid me with sharp tongues, I do not worry
About them, but I am troubled by my vanguard being constrained

57. When I saw the people approaching, their group
Whispering, I turned away without being blamed.

58. They call upon ‘Antar while the spears are like
The poles of a well in the whiteness of the dark.

59. My steeds are docile wherever I desire, accompanying me.
I spur them on with a resolute command.

60. I feared that I would die and you would not know
The vicissitudes of war upon my two sons, pressed together.

61. Those who insult me I do not insult,
And those who threaten me if I do not meet them with my blood,

62. If they do so, I have left their father
Prey for beasts and every vulture, shearer.