1. For whom are the abodes as if they were not inhabited
Between Kinās and Ṭalḥ, the ascetic?

2. And I do see you becoming old and decrepit
The death of passion and the healing of the inflamed eye

3. She looked at you as the eye of a weaver
Who had cut her ties at the summit of her spinning wheel

4. And if you seek her intimacy, she is miserly with it
And if you offer her love, she does not refuse

5. And I remembered you while the riding animal was submissive
As if they were the chicks of Tenufah’s wilderness

6. Drinking at Adumā the fledglings whose eyebrows
Were dyed red with kohl

7. O mother Nājiyah peace be upon you
Before departure and before the blame of the critic

8. And when you rise early, you are greeted
By the warblings of the long necked sand grouses

9. If only I had known that the last of our days together
Was the day of departure, I would have done what I did not do

10. Or I would have feared the hasty doubts
And been content or asked what I did not ask

11. I prepared deadly poison for the poets
And gave the last of them a cup I gave the first

12. When I placed my branding iron on Al-Farazdaq
And Al-Ba’ith bit it, I cut off Al-Akhṭal’s nose

13. Shame on him who built the sky aspiring upwards
And built your abode in the lowliest ravine

14. A house which defiles your glory in its courtyard
Filthy are its sitting-places, evil its entrance

15. And you have built the meanest house to be built
So I destroyed your house with that which makes one wither

16. I was the first to build virtues for myself
And you inflated your pride in the early times

17. The glory of prostrating slaves made you weary
So look, perhaps you will claim one who bites

18. And praise the clans of Banū Fuqaym, for they
Killed your father, whose death remains unavenged

19. And leave off the Berbers, for your drinking with them
Is bitter, its consequences like the taste of colocynth

20. I poured down upon you from the sky
Until I snatched you, O Farazdaq, from the heights

21. After I had silenced Al-Ba’ith it was as if he
Was an inanimate object, startled by the violent shaking of a torrent

22. And I branded you, O Ba’ith, with my mark
While Al-Farazdaq chewed on it under the shackles

23. It suffices Al-Farazdaq to be insulted by a prostrating slave
And to reckon the poetry of Muruqqish and Muhallil as great

24. The generations of Banū Qufayrah sought precedence
Covering the trackless desert violently on their riding camels

25. Al-Zubayr was killed while you were scheming
Evil be to your scheming which did not get undone

26. Do not mention the violations of kings, for you
After Al-Zubayr are like a menstruating woman who did not cleanse herself

27. O son of Shu’rah, why do you block our way
With the blind, and not Qufayrah, so move aside!

28. And it became clear in the faces of the prostrating slaves
An evil which bubbles up, its fog does not dissipate

29. And I left the prostrating slaves as if they were
Locusts at the foothills of al-Khamīs, stupid and unthinking

30. I take refuge in the two mountains of Tamīm, my stronghold
And the abode of my house is in the tallest Yafā’

31. Our dreams weigh down mountains with composure
And our ignoramus surpasses the deeds of the ignorant

32. So return to the judgment of Quraysh, for they
Are the people of prophethood and the revealed Book

33. So ask, when the servants depart and war
Burns, snarling, like an ignited blaze

34. And the horses sniff the ground, and they have seen
The gleam of the armor in the wide plain

35. Do the sons of Ṭuhayyah equal my horsemen?
And the sons of Khadhāf, and that cannot be matched!

36. And if I am angry, the sons of my Janadalah pelt
Stones behind me, like the best janadal seeds

37. ‘Amr and Sa‘d, O Farazdaq, among them
Are the blossoms of the stars, and the towering mountains

38. Al-Farazdaq, when he would seek refuge with his uncle
Was like the despised one seeking refuge beneath the small jujube tree

39. And boast about Ḍabbah, your mother is from among them
The son of Ḍabbah is no smooth-tongued deceiver

40. And Muḍar has judged for us over you with its merit
And Rabi‘ah with the definitive judgment

41. Indeed the one who built the sky built for us
A house above you, so it has no columns

42. Convey to the Banū Waqbān that their corpses
Have become lighter, so they do not weigh a mustard seed

43. The snakes are repelled by your forbearance, yet you
Are like moths who cover the kindled fire

44. You line up swords while others wield them
O son of the generations, and that is the work of the polished

45. And at Rahrāhān you quivered like
A separated branch of the date palm, terrified

46. Al-Farazdaq was castrated, and eunuchs are disgraced
Hoping for the favors of the effeminate cuckolds

47. The noble ladies fled from the daughters of the prostrating slaves
Like gazelles or the horns of a deer

48. After Al-Farazdaq exerted his utmost
Qufayrah settled him, so he cannot escape

49. Playfulness distracted your father from virtues and high stature
The bending of elbows and the raising of spinning staffs

50. Convey my gift to Al-Farazdaq, for it
Is a weight added to a heavily laden camel

51. We straighten bent necks, and we behead
The head of the crowned with the cutting sword