قفا نبك من ذكرى حبيب وعرفان

Halt, you two, let us weep for the memory of a beloved and her traces, / And a campsite whose markers have faded away across the ages.

Years have passed over it since my time, until it has become / Like ancient scripture inked across the scrolls of Christian monks.

Remembering the entire tribe gathered there stirred up within me / Deep-seated roots of illness from my innermost soul and hidden sorrows.

My tears poured down onto my cloak as though / They were leaking water-skins from Shu'ayb, overflowing with heavy drizzle.

If a man does not keep a tight guard over his own tongue, / Then there is nothing else belonging to him that he can ever lock away.

And yet, you might see me riding in Jabir's traveling gear, / Straddling a lean mount while my burial shroud flutters in the wind.

How many a distressed warrior have I wheeled back to rescue, / And how many a captive have I freed from his irons so he redeemed me!

With true-hearted companions I set out in the early dawn hours, / And up they all sprang, standing between reckless revelry and wine-daze.

A distant, desolate wilderness I have cut straight across its heart, / Upon a tough-hided, smooth-striding, utterly obedient mount.

Through a rainstorm colored like the fana plant I descended, / Where every heavy, groaning cloud takes its turn battering the earth.

Mounted on a noble steed that gives you its speed before you even ask, / Displaying boundless running, neither stiff nor sluggish.

Like a wild fawn of the pale gazelles upon which has swooped / An eagle plunging down from the high crags of Mount Thahlan.

Through a barren wasteland hollow as an wild ass's belly, a trackless maze, / I cut my way with a lean-faced, bright-hued, swift-footed charger.

It brushes against the flanks of the pack-camels with its muscular frame, / Just as a supple green branch sways gently over other boughs.

And a galloping charge like a sudden wadi flood, reaching deep / Into the enemy's lands, backed by power, pride, and strength.

I drove my men forward until their mounts grew utterly exhausted, / And even the noble warhorses no longer needed to be led by reins.

Until you would see the dark stallion that was once so stout and fleshy, / Now surrounded by scavengers of vultures and eagles waiting for the end.