1. The sands lie between us,
and the signs of the cattle herders or their riders,

2. so I said hoping my gaze would reach them,
or that they would dislike and resent it.

3. Love found nothing but sorrow,
and my gaze reached nothing but their hostility.

4. With my memory I inhale the earth they tread
in their absence, yet I see them in my heart.

5. May he who shot at the lover from afar
with a distant arrow, fulfill his intention.

6. The homelands approach with their inhabitants,
the wish of a man you did not know his condition.

7. O friend, do you see the lightning in its shine
twisting with grief to coil its rope?

8. And they said his tooth is at Ramah,
while how far our stance is from his tooth!

9. Let the heart stay awake with their memory
for it has tasted amongst them what suffices it.

10. So it lowered its luggage but with them
and spent its life but upon them.