And some anxious soul suspected the worst of us,
while we were leading a fierce, grinding lion of war.

Its proud bulk looked like Mount Uhud
when its slopes rise before the on-lookers’ eyes.

In its ranks you would see bodies wrapped in full coats of mail—
heroes beneath stout, unyielding shields.

There were sleek, clipped-maned chargers, arrow-straight, well branded;
on them we bore down upon the errant misguiders.

Whenever they charged and we closed with them,
it was as though—at the Gate of the Two Depressions—our hands were locked with theirs.

A people in whom we found no man of sound judgement,
yet they still cried, “Are we not the rightly guided?”

So we hemmed them in for a hard, unbroken month,
standing over them like irresistible conquerors.

Morning and evening, day after day, we would come at them,
fully panoplied in arms.

In our hands were keen, flashing swords
with which we split skulls and necks.

Their glare, when bared in our uplifted hands,
was like the sudden glitter of a carnelian stone flashing in the night—
its facets plainly seen.

Had it not been for a trench to which they clung,
we would have laid them all to ruin.

But the trench stood between us and them;
in it they sought refuge from us in fear.

If we depart, know that we have left Saʿd
as a hostage by your very dwellings.

When darkness falls you will hear the wailing for Saʿd—
voices echoing their plaintive grief.

We shall pay you another visit before long,
as we visited you before, shoulder to shoulder,

with a host from Kinānah, none of them unarmed—
like lions of the thicket guarding their lair.

He said: Kaʿb ibn Mālik, of the clan of Banū Salamah, answered him, saying:
[from the wāfir metre]

A questioner keeps asking what we faced; had she been there,
she would have seen us steadfast.

We endured, acknowledging no equal to Allah,
trusting in Him through whatever befell us.

We had the Prophet—a faithful minister—
through whom we rose above all mankind.

We fight a people who wronged us and were disloyal,
ever lying in wait with their enmity.

Whenever they rise against us, we forestall them
with blows that overtake the rash.

You see us wrapped in ample coats of mail,
their folds like pools of standing water.

In our right hands are light, gleaming swords
with which we still the tumult of the trouble-makers.

At the gate of the two trenches we were like lions,
whose supple paws protect their lair.