1. We were delighted when memories overtook us,
And pressing needs befell us, O elders!

2. They caught up with us while we were on the heights,
As a train catches up with its leader.

3. My friends' eyes brimmed over slightly,
Then collapsed into a downpour.

4. The eye of our most resolute remained hopeful,
Hopeful though its consequences were risky,

5. Like a warrior in a hopeless situation, hopeful
Though bitterness weighs down his weakness.

6. We were neighbors in the valleys of Najd,
Then the distance grew, and the neighborliness ceased.

7. I glanced with my eyelids one morning in Uthayfiyat,
When yearning subsided as they departed

8. To the shelter of Bani Ghifar’s sister
At Kabat, where settlements jostled her.

9. Carriers balance the loads on the hillsides
For a porter, since the villages had withered.

10. The riders headed for the daughters of Nish
While we avoided their sunsets.

11. Stars lead us to stars
As the Pleiades led to Al-Thurayya constellation.

12. So I said - and that lessened what I owed them -
"It quenched a land where trains stopped."

13. I saw my companions with swaying litters,
Loads, after the day’s joys had ended.

14. Moaning over saddles while to the herdsmen’s hands
Sprawled the wasteland’s expanses, desolate.

15. It was as if, in our bosoms, the epochs
Had built nests for us, and we played with them, little.

16. So my glance was not at fault, but
The likes of my glance the eras had watered.

17. The heart almost swoons from joy towards them,
And from prolonged longing, it is exhausted.

18. It remains avoiding the ridges, fluttering
A falcon’s flutter, imprisoned by shackles.

19. In that alive one whom I saw, a cheek
Whose sunshine was intimate, radiant.

20. The coolness of her cheek was as if, after sleep,
Her mouth worked at making medicine.

21. When the pillow crumpled under her, she leaned
Slanted - either death or peril.

22. You retract your arms from her slowly
If she embraces, and it tilts into an embrace.

23. The husband almost drinks her up when she
Meets him with her dazed dazzlement.

24. Her scent makes the innards quiver,
And a love that cannot be sold or lent.

25. You see in her your cousin when he makes sacrifice,
Pure complexioned, without any soil.

26. Like ivory touched by a pleasant musk
The merchants bring from Yemen.

27. When the caller calls, he starts crying
Beware the dawn, though bewaring does not avail.

28. And night wishes an extra night added to it,
For it was never created a day.

29. It keeps back the panting breath of the sleepless one
Until it settles down with the pillow as a home.

30. As if a yellow ingot
Which a lion then stamped with his seal.

31. Her lover spends the night in a trace of musk
And salt, whose pearls have melted.