1. By your life! My heart is not inclined towards its folk with love
Nor is there one who comes to me with a poem day after day

2. Indeed! Life is but nights and days
And nothing continues steadily in one state

3. Nights at Dhat al-Talh near Muhajjar
Are dearer to us than nights in an abode

4. I spend the mornings near Hirr, and youth has passed me by
Did any other than Hirr cause my youth to disappear?

5. When I taste her mouth I say: “The taste of wine
Aged from what the merchant brings from Tujjar”

6. They are two she-camels from the camels of Tibalah
Near two leather water bags or like some docile wild cows

7. When they stand, musk diffuses from them
The morning breeze brought the scent of cassia

8. As if the merchants unloaded in Saba’
Some unripe dates until they brought them to Yasar

9. So when they ripened, half was poured into a bowl
And strained with water without sediment or turbidity

10. With water from a cloud that dripped from the side of a boulder
Into the belly of another, pure and clear its water, unsullied

11. By your life! Being among asses does not hurt me
Except for delusions and drunkenness

12. And apart from evident wretchedness, would that
My tongue had refrained that day from calumny

13. By your life! No happiness to the miserly transgressor
Nor safety on the day of reckoning and loss

14. By my life! There are people whom we saw yesterday among them
A shelter for the noble and the heavily armed warriors

15. Dearer to us than people with spears
Who follow in the tracks of their wild beasts

16. Sa’d entertains us, and comes early to our group
With pairs of gazelles and wild cows

17. By my life! Sa’d, wherever his abode is established
Is dearer to us than you, O reddish-black horse

18. And you recognize in him traits of his father
And of his uncle, and of Yazid and Hujr

19. The generosity of this one, and the righteousness of that one, and the loyalty of this one
And that one who attains his goal whether sober or drunk