1. What has inflamed your eyes, or have they almost wept
For the ruins of a house with frost still clinging?

2. No gains can fulfill what you have promised,
Nor can your heart forget them until death.

3. As for the wild ducks, I shall elegize them
With an elegy befitting my elegy of them,

4. Grey scratching in their feathers, their roads
Are turbid waves with muddy hidden depths.

5. Their beaks nibbled by one skilled with cold hands
Who fashioned them like the nibs of reed-pens.

6. They walk like girls of the quarter hastening
Fearing a folk to cover and hide them.

7. They feed their chicks with gaping throats
Or crumbs not thrown by their shooter.

8. When she saw the folk she flew, and knew
That night was near and the quarter's fold closing in.

9. She yearns where she has not flown, depicted
And no arrow aimed at her nearest depths.

10. She flaps yellow, her remnants still
Harmed far from the acacia's thorns.