1. I knew the high summits of Al-Fao after a year passed,
Its days and months moved on,

2. The abodes laid bare by Jubeira met there
The winds from east and west.

3. As if its people had not milked the cows there,
So the buffalo with truncated lips could graze on its fresh growth,

4. Patience, like the sand dunes sleepy at noon,
Slow over the stained loincloth its vigor spent,

5. When shifted aside were the robes, and it leaned
Back toward the husband, you could almost depict it,

6. And the wide-hipped one from the clan of Ja’far
Dyed at the limbs, white of breast,

7. She pulses for the dead who dropped upon her,
Pulsing like pollen aroused in the depths of her womb,

8. As if she were girt with a belt of mourner
Where met her breasts and waist,

9. So I feared from my streaming tears their trace
Upon my sight, though the eye is blind to her form,

10. The eye’s water burst forth every evening,
For yearning has hours that stir its vigor,

11. I feared nothing, not even our parting, until I saw her
Led along on camel litters, her train,

12. Still I peer from where my gaze once centered
On the ground, until her departure caused my eye to turn back,

13. Turning my eye back though sickened,
The two palms, the somberness of her litters,

14. Her clan was distraught when the howdahs raced off
And her days of joy boiled into grief.