1. She rode her camel, groaning,
Her mouth dyed crimson as pomegranates, nothing else.

2. The sun shone out, the darkness of parting gathered,
The stars of her tears fell from her eyelids.

3. The tears of lovers froze in her throat
Or melted into threads of metal on her eyelids.

4. She is forbidden to be seen resembling
Her color, figure, being, and folds.

5. So death, only death, without union with her,
And death, only death, in estrangement from her.

6. My affliction took on the figure of her body,
Her stature, her glances, her shining teeth.

7. A young gazelle protects everything like it,
From all loose-tongued slanderers and teeth.

8. The Pleiades go below the Pleiades when she bends,
And the full moon below her glances and gazelles.

9. With those three I’ll never be tortured as long as I live -
By their spears, their writhing, and their separation.

10. They veil the moons in their haloes,
And they touch the branches in their undulations.

11. So I put on my body all its illnesses,
And I emptied my liver of all but its pounding.

12. No part of my body had need of my soul,
Were it not that it took pity on its homelands.

13. I became heedless of every human being, but some -
Distracts the eye from humankind.

14. The deer went their way at nightfall,
As if they were humans in their dwellings.

15. The full moons of night appear to them,
And they imagine them to be water in their valleys.

16. And they see the lightning flashes of night, which
They think are fires sparked among them.

17. Beauty itself was revealed in loveliness,
As if the world was revealed in the splendor of its ruler.

18. And the glances of her eyelids over her lovers
Are like its swords prevailing over the skulls of youths.