1. I stood at the ruins of the abode of my she-camel,
Tears raining from my eyelids as I questioned it,

2. How can a ruined abode return the returning?
Where the passing years had strengthened its dwellings.

3. It remained roofless like nesting doves,
Its poles leafless amidst dense shrubs,

4. Its basin-like trough lay darkened and humbled,
Its useless ropes left dangling by the abandoned tent pegs.

5. To it, every mendicant inclines to each generous one,
Howsoever he cries out to it, it evades and eludes him,

6. As well as the chief, the famed, the guards and the nobles,
Even the swift-footed if he prayed, its tent pegs obeyed him.

7. So I asked of love and bore the worries patiently,
Its food carried off by hyenas, so its shoulders were bared.

8. As if I had tightened the saddle on an active she-camel,
A projectile, hiding the mound and the intention within.

9. In the vigor of youth, the provisions limited,
An origional lost by the separating calamities.

10. So it remained alone, singular, apart from its ewes,
Confronting the horrors of travel, and they confronting it.

11. It sweeps its hearing in the shade of the oleander bushes,
Where a small cloud clucks, and its showers leak through.

12. It pastures like an obscuring cloud, taking cover thereby,
From time long buried in clouds, delivering its rain.

13. So it endured with a resolve, in spite of its weakness,
Driven to desperation, its knees almost buckling.

14. When it said, “The troops have come at us from all sides,”
The cavalry descended on him, an immense collapse.

15. And it spent a terrible night, while its fears for itself kept it awake,
And when the corner of dawn cracked, its brother came to it.

16. Lean, worn, his cloak patched, a gritty nomad,
Few are his camels, his face emaciated and barren.

17. He circles a barren land like a lost camel,
Disheveled, covered in grime, his saddlebags equal.

18. Bleary, like wine skins, and stinking,
Jostled by his young she-camels, their necklaces pulling.

19. So he released them from their hobbles, returning,
Sure that they were his defenders in the fight.

20. And she prompted and called to him from behind,
Charging at him again and again, unrelenting.

21. When he realized she was unveiling her face,
With a rectangular strip of cloth, her fine muslin veils.

22. He imagined and was too shy because of the honor, and turned away,
Like the glance of a linked arrow, glancing off a solid surface.

23. He rammed her with the point of his spear,
As the owl rams the drinking doves at a watering hole.

24. And he stabbed her first with a raging blow,
Spilling her insides with his effective blade.

25. Another came upon him and pierced him with his spear,
So he fell, and all his joints were immobilized.

26. Misfortune then finished him off, as the doomed man perished,
Misfortune destroys the man of ill fate in haste.

27. Then a fourth one depended, when he attacked him,
On the expert wielder of spears, his weapon at the ready.

28. So they fled like flooding wadis, the horses stampeding dispersed,
As they had fled from the darkness of a fiery, churning sea.

29. But he startled them when they scattered in alarm,
Though they had carried the violence of his hands as burdens.

30. So they returned, and the lone singular man returned animated,
Plucking at them with whatever parts of him could manage it.

31. When the dogs saw there was no escape
For their dogs, and the bull was charging fiercely,

32. They called them, and they poured down on him from all sides,
Eight earnest ones besetting him from every side.

33. So he turned and fled the circle of troughs, defeated,
Bearing a distress that tearing could not diminish for him.

34. Is this so? Or did I whip the criticizers, muted,
Confused, his honor shredded, his shoulders burdened?

35. Beside five locks of the Zanj’s hair that had captured him,
Ringlets of those like him, none equaling his perfections.

36. I travelled the miles of every desolate expanse,
For a matter I undertake despite the kings’ disapproval.

37. And a blond entertainer whose cup I disputed,
More delicious than the finest wine, her beauty apparent.

38. And a white woman, pure as a virgin, I courted her,
And her family, while the night lay green, concealing us.

39. So she said, “You’ve persisted in this shameful slander against me,
While theLiving never sleeps, nor is unaware.”

40. So I kissed her mouth as she pulled away,
Her tears watering the stream, pouring down.

41. Warily and anxiously she said with a moan,
Turning away in fear, as tears wet her eyeliner,

42. “You’ve avoided us five times, so we said perhaps
His heart has turned away from us and shortened his rope.”

43. I said, “God forbid that I forget you, and passion
Leads the young man willingly to your thresholds.”

44. So when the Pleiades receded, I returned going back,
My endeavor alternating between speed and delay.

45. Oh, the army I crashed into with my resolve,
And it burst into tears at our separation!

46. Oh, the adversary I brought down, though he feared me,
And his tribes became dearer after that disgrace!

47. Oh, the surging tribe whose evil I held back from the mouth of demise
By my grace, so after being parched, its rivers flowed!

48. I supported the land during its days,
And were it not for me, it would have ended while still consuming it.

49. And the empowered king who vexes the envious, I embraced him
With a whiteness that did not touch me, for which his favors are owed me!