1. Is there no reunion after this parting of ours,
No mending after such long estrangement?

2. After you left, O people of Najd,
We've borne such longing as cannot be borne.

3. You graced us lately with your nearness,
But can the days of your company return?

4. You went away with the souls within you—
I wonder, did our souls give you comfort?

5. You left behind you bodies in distress
Tossed on the embers of passion, restless,

6. And hearts and livers painfully diseased
From the blows of ardent love, broken,

7. And tongues struck dumb, with no speech,
And ears gone deaf, with no hearing,

8. And eyelids sleepless, in constant distress,
Refusing the solace of slumber—

9. As if, when you loaded your riding-camels,
Our hearts had become orphaned nestlings

10. Whose mother the hunters had snatched away,
Or gazelles assailed by wild beasts.

11. I roam about, distressed, sick with longing,
Though nothing but a yard separates you and me.

12. How then, when between us lies a sea
Whose breadth offers passage to none?

13. Greet them, greet the beloved folk
Who parted from us without a glance backward,

14. And a gazelle of the gazelles of companionship
Who grazes where the archers cannot graze,

15. Who battles me with languishing eyes—
I am slain though known for my courage.

16. I recalled his beauty and the steeds stomped
Angrily, maddened by the strokes of the horsewhip;

17. Their ostrich plumes tremble with desire
And the Indian blade flashes within its sheath.

18. The wine bottle pays no heed to the censor
Nor does the silver anklet obey the prohibition!