1. By my life! When my camel and I
Were seeking different passions, journeying together,

2. Had she left me because of her yearning,
I would have enough sadness then to suffice me.

3. When will you join my passion with yours
And why do you not help me bear the heavy burden?

4. O my two livers, from fear of the agony
Of parting and from being diverted from purpose, you are scorched.

5. When we are about to leave the abode desolate
And the staves of separation are broken in twain,

6. My friends say to me, blaming me,
“An Iraqi longing for one from Yemen!”

7. “The Iraqi has no friend from Yemen”
Perhaps in the twists of fate they will meet.

8. I have endured from a dusky beauty what
Neither mountain nor arm has strength for.

9. As though wild cats with claws unsheathed
Were hung to my bosom because of the throbbing.

10. I made the diviner of al-Yamamah to be my judge
And the diviner of Hajar, if the two could cure me.

11. They said, “Yes, we cure all disease”
And they stood up with the visitors competing.

12. “Yes and amen,” they said, when I was in this state,
To examine me. I said, “For a long time now.”

13. They left no chant they knew
Or potion but they gave it to me to drink.

14. They cured not at all the disease that was in me
And hoarded no good advice or treatments for me.

15. They said, “May God cure you, by God we have no way
To what your ribs contain, O hand of strife!”

16. I rejoiced that the diviners’ turbans
Were falling from their heads, so useless were they.