1. Where are your maidens, O abandoned white ruins,
Whose dwellers have worn you down and channeled rivers through you?

2. They who would host guests when the north winds blew
And kindle fires when evening drew near.

3. Whenever its embers died down they revived it
With bowls of dried butter and branches of thorn trees.

4. Around you they tethered their steeds and marked out for you
Trails from the highlands as gifts.

5. Their horses' hooves trampled your soil until
They named your land's cheeks the cheeks of maidens.

6. Time has left you nothing but lessons for eyes
And matter to wonder about.

7. Remnants of palaces of long-departed nights
Have told us news of their people.

8. Scents of the land as if fluttering scent-sellers
Were shaking perfumes on it.

9. Domes as though they had raised from it
Lighthouses for the lost in darkness.

10. They calculated between them and the stars of the horizon
A kinship from nights of yore.

11. Where are your swooping eagles who lodged
And made their nests their abode?

12. Men, like lions, walked your ground,
Summoning their pillars and comrades.

13. How fine, the day your people came into being!
How fine, the day your abode became a home!

14. They were only like riders who lingered awhile
At their camp, then departed.