1. You played love songs but could hardly play them well,
And denied the virtues of one you used to know so well,

2. Estrangement so gripped you, it was as though
You saw death in the house where once you were kept whole,

3. Obduracy in one deaf to reunion’s call—not at all
Like one who draws near in love, and is kind to all,

4. When my love awoke at dawn, still tired from the night before,
She rose in a coat of mail and a bridle with bells galore,

5. In freshest green from Nu‘man—then she proudly rode
To gently punish the hillsides when their flowers exploded,

6. Arousing hearts, as though she were
An owl hovering round its nestlings without care,

7. From shyness, they resembled, it could be said,
A herd of does, or gazelles freshly bled,

8. When they conversed it was like the yield
Of bees, or first pickings in a vineyard freshly tilled,

9. Guarding their secrets, except from whom they wished,
Believing none of the lies of spying peepers and fishers,

10. After despair, they would speak without guile
Words that delight ardent lovers all the while,

11. When the black of night patrolled around the dawn
They fell asleep wrapped in their long gowns,

12. And if their mother woke them after the summer day
Had risen high or started to give way,

13. They called for the staffs of litter they had been carried in
From Nu‘man on days of old, before sin,

14. Which they sweetly sniffed from end to tip—
Fine wands, the tallest where the litters were equipped.