1. Did you not see how life has divided them,
With resolve, one day on the gloomy desert?

2. Its whims distracted them from pastureland while it stirred
For us a passion—worries do impassion!

3. My eyes did not spill tears until they bore
At dawn burdens for them, and yearnings too.

4. Until I saw life scattering their bones—
A Yemeni mare prances, adorned in silk.

5. So one rejoices, enamored of your separation,
While for his home he weeps when far away.

6. For if India were a walled paradise,
Then despair might make the youth disconsolate.

7. When the graceful one settled in India,
The time for my departure from Damascus was nigh.

8. I exchanged the land of Sheeha for it and bartered
Meadows of wishful thinking for desolate wastes.

9. And I paid no heed to Hawran or to Coon downstream,
Where for them are ridges and formations echoing.

10. No joining will occur unless brought closer by
Light horses pulling at the tent ropes insistently.

11. And a train of them, their fetlocks plaited,
Gird themselves, brisk, harnessed, and braided.

12. Some have carved poles on their litters that seem
Like the trunks of a cedar wood thicket between.

13. When they descend on honored terrain they bear
Burdens from them, quaking and clamoring.

14. And in the horizon's dust their mirage flows
Along their dunes before the dawn, rippling.

15. When I traverse the wilderness, there wanders in its shadows
A herd grazing the wasteland, docile and obedient.

16. By the life of Murri's daughter, it is not I
For whom the substitute women wail sorrowfully!

17. And the mother of the two boys knows I am
To the guest assiduous, of long-standing habit.

18. For I boil the meat raw, and I am one
Who spoils the meat, and it still undercooked.

19. When the hungry nursing maid in the night demands
Her nursing breast—a possession of two teats—

20. If the guests seek one who gives hospitality,
My cooking pots in winter thaw for them.

21. A thoroughbred—from the bone of her cannon, blood—
Clotted, undrained. But I did not find it revolting.

22. It is as if the baggage camels at every halt
Dripped on her, in the wasteland's passes, broth.

23. If I am angered by anything, my forbearance
And my face thereby the mother of the boy made smooth.