1. Your yearning did not rouse from the ruins' decay,
Lightning flashed, the north wind and south wind passed.

2. The north wind played with its braids and struck it,
The rain clouds' downpour drenching, prolonged.

3. The winds' gusts dragged its train behind,
As women's robes trail with hems outspread.

4. They turned from a past whose days had elapsed,
And remained in eras of diverse states.

5. I recalled an abode whose people hosted us,
When we gathered there in halal circles.

6. We'd pause our talk if it seemed too intrusive,
And joke when maxims evoked apprehension.

7. Until our people parted with thrown intent,
And our people heralded their fading end.

8. They departed; so too the gentle gazelles,
Pale-faced, taken to remote ravines.

9. Their newborns gathered around them and they handed
The reins of their camels to grasp of palms.

10. They moved from al-Balqā’, their camels complaining
Of the pace's violence, their robes held high.

11. They placed all the bare hills to their right,
And Buraqah's meadows to their left side.

12. I looked and my tears flowed after they had gone,
The does had vanished behind the hills' screen.

13. The dunes' ridges loomed like ships’ tilting boards
When ballasts are cast and the ship careens.

14. Do you know the place of all who pine?
To befriend them while not overbold?

15.
Without plucking, the lote-tree bears no fruit;

16. No love ripens without pain foretold.
Buthainah said: “Don’t mind our vines’ blight!”

17. Buthainah, I do care and mourn their plight.
The sinners curb each noble lady,

18. Fearing and worshipping her like an idol.
As if their eyes were taken from Sirius,

19. Their clubs fashioned from the darkest steel.
I conceal her love, though one of them

20. Is with the unheeding, to passion sealed.

21. O Buthainah, do you know how I’ve been seared
By a doe’s betrayal and friends’ breach?

22. By tyranny the Fates strum their lute,
After calm with mournful tune they beseech.

23. I counseled your cousin against attacking
With our battle-tested heroes of might.

24. A battle whose blades flay the frail,
Brandished at a mare’s flank in long night.

25.
Or don’t you see me, in my love for her,

26. Become downcast, kilt lowered from my waist?
Rust roughens my shoulders as if I’m

27. One fading in sickness, its weight encased.
Would that our life’s joy would return to us

28. In a time now gone, an era elapsed.
That we might sell days that passed before

29. For days that came after, so brief, so fast.
When the foe denies, his claims are lies,

30. Yet the adviser's words ring true and wise.
Each companion is like she has fangs

31. That drip with the cold of a meadow’s demise.
A torrent like one descending a stair,

32. Coursing down glass with heavy despair.
She who gives console for what is beyond restore,

33. Though she cannot reward with gown or shawl.
With shoulders revealed and concealed passions -

34. Her cloak casts over them its cover and pall.
An aged charmer, with shapely legs