1. My friend, let's stop and ask news
Of some who camped at the old encampment yesterday, what they did,

2. The mirage told me when I stopped beside it:
“The approaching party hurried the separation, so it bore heavily.”

3. The nomad fires deluded you, until you saw them
At dawn, breaking camp, their camel-driver urging the stragglers.

4. When we halted to bid them farewell, though the voices
Of the camel drivers had given the call to departure.

5. She stood, for a while, to watch the course
Of departure, then we saw that she would not outstrip fate.

6. With a reddish white, intensely black camel, kneading
His knees into the litter, his neck outstretched.

7. And the teary, red-rimmed eyes of a ewe Left behind by her newly-weaned lamb.
And saplings of sweet, cool greens

8. Like aloe-plants in taste, exhaling fragrance.
As if an old safflower-dyed garment

9. Had been plundered by one grayed on the temples.
Ambergris, and lavender, and clove,

10. And syrup of roses to heal one sick with love.
When this star has climbed, and the horizon reddened.

11. One day she said to her girlfriend:
“What do you bid me do, for my heart is cracked?”

12. “Is there a sister of mine today who will console me,
One of you I can confide in about what has happened?”

13. A noble-spirited woman answered her,
With a judicious word, an excellent suggestion:

14. “Restrain yourself with modesty and generosity,
You are not the first girl to be hung upon a man!”

15. “Do not reveal your love until I can win him back,
I will suffice you of him, if I do not die soon.

16. She brusquely turned her back, and said to her companion:
“For God’s sake, blame him for some of what he has done!”

17. “Tell him what I told you, listen to his answer,
Do not weary of engaging him in conversation,

18. Until he sees that whatever the slanderers said of us
Reaches him from us, every bit of it transmitted.”

19. Make him recognize them as wits, and preserve –
Without causing offense – that you anger the man.

20. By God, my pact with him – may God preserve him! –
Is that if a sin comes from one who dislikes forgiveness,

21. If he is backbitten among us or suffers our rebuke,
His critic will not depart from us unchided.

22.
I said: “Listen! You have uttered the finest refinement.

23. And it eludes not the intelligent man when one speaks lightly.
With this she intended stinginess, so we might excuse her.

24. Yet we see that she will not lack pretexts.”
“Why is the heart named so, but for its fluctuations?

25. Why is the fu'ād called fu'ād, if not that it understands?”
“As for the tale she claimed was brought to me,

26. I had no intention toward it when it came to me indirectly.
If I obeyed her in backbiting, she would come to know

27. The words of a tattling rebuker, were he given occasion.”
“I will turn him against her in his anger,

28. Though he has come to me, begging my consent.”