1. Aish, I see not your people losing composure
Amid the passionate cries and the discomposure

2. How could the keeper of warming fires
Lose it over their blazing embers in the freeze

3. They confront him with veils over their mouths
Their wrists like well-honed blades that lacerate

4. A man's wealth saves him so he's self-sustained
Better than being in poverty, steeped in sorrow

5. It helps him cope with the pitfalls of days
Like rain pouring from saturated clouds

6. Did not that Umayyad say, seeing you today
Your body is limp and lacking all vigor?

7. As if the palms of Khaybar adorned you
With early buds, still moist with sap?

8. If I wished, I could make myself
A bosom friend of the statues, glowing candles

9. Caressing me if I want, cheeks
With chubby folds, fattened livestock

10. As if saffron on their wrists
And ruby lips were dripping crimson liquid

11. But I stayed with my people's remains
Abandoned by them like filth discarded

12. Death finding them but missing me
As I lurk behind in every nook

13. Do I still hope, Aish, that some union
Between you and I, is possible after such disgrace?

14. His mount and saddle seem to be
Pastured on alfalfa, grazed in spring

15. And the rag I made my pillow
Cradling my arms and ribs

16. A she-camel whose hoofs
Stampede as if a bellowing ox

17. When it grows dark, her hands grope
With the groping of a sleepless night

18. A stirring mare twining with sorcery
Nearly takes flight from the herd’s sight

19. Flanks fleeing her on both sides
As an enemy flees from selling his wares

20. Honor nursed her in cotton, nursed her
To fledglings in a lofty nest

21. Like an ostrich who harmed with young
Dripping juices like saplings oozing wetness

22. Her stallion in every valley croons
When rain leaves every pasture green

23. Like the whistling of springs from granite cliffs
Making bracelets on wrists resonate

24. She led him to drink from the valley of chaste ones
The clashing of water in an unviolated throat

25. When she riled them, they struck him
Where the spear strikes the refined noble’s snout

26. She made their resentments conspicuous
By what he had already attained without intervention

27. Sulkers wanting distance from him
While watching with expectant, observant eyes

28. Their bodies swerving from him
Like the ribs of an eager, ravenous she-camel

29. Rarely waiting when she can grab
The morsel of flesh from a lanky gazelle

30. Ever roaming between ravines
Dragging the head of a muscular young calf

31. Chasing the master of mule deer one day
At the meadows of crowds of cattle

32. You’d see fragments of skulls among them
Like dissolving gravel, crumbling away

33. She shook him off in constant evasion
And he was integrated into the folds of wondrous creation