1. Visit us today, O travellers,
While fate still allows us to meet.

2. Let's look upon Salma - if she's stingy with her tent ropes
We'll leave, for of what use is gazing?

3. From love of Salma, whose liver,
If examined among my ribs, bears her trace.

4. I was warned of parting at dawn from my ants
And what is built of sticks - does caution help?

5. Among the mixed throng - some heading right,
Some climbing, some of the folk descending.

6. They returned the camels or left them suspended
Till dawn broke and they went on.

7. So they faced them, their saddles white,
And turned them aside to the left.

8. The rough ground met them with open
Mouths, each a path for them strewn with pearls.

9. As though they were a train watering its runnels,
A picker wherever autumn showed its harvest,

10. The fresh green of the Busr palm-trees
Above the hollows, viands its fruits adorn.

11. The winds twist in its thickets diversely
And the palm-tree trunks creak as they bow.

12. Clothed in red and green the Lord decorated it
As the unmarried man is clothed in flowers.

13. And in the clouds Salma, as she bids farewell,
Like a cloud at night-fall dimming the sight.

14. She confronted them with hunks of meat, wailing,
Baring her forearms - the needs and the travellers!

15. As though her tangled, dishevelled locks
Were fermenting with mercury and linen.

16. Till we reached her, by the quarter unveiled,
Bare armed, distant, girded with weapons.

17. We said "Peace be upon you" and he snarled at us
"And God's mercy - what news otherwise?"

18. He sought to frighten or disperse us
With a thing filthy in which the bowstring speeds.

19. "Are you visitors? What has led
You to guide them?" He drew them back.