1. Do you forget her on the hillside,
While she yearns for me, Abayla?

2. Slumber has clothed her in kohl
Of bitterness and sorrows.

3. You see the love-crazed camel there
Turned hoary, made weary by love,

4. Renouncing passion to live devout
Or passion's victim, slain thereof.

5. Do you know, O secret-keeper mine,
When souls take leave for good or ill?

6. Are eggs that hatch to cockerels
Or eggs that birth ostriches still?

7. No naked blade's as smooth as one
Sheathed in its scabbard fine.

8. Who cuts not sheathed harms more
Than who cuts with steel bare.

9. Hush! Cease these words, lest you provoke
A soul's undoing, and dire regrets.

10. The right hand errs though it intends
To grasp affinities unseen as yet.

11. Beholding a campsite abandoned
By its dwellers, my heart was dismayed