1. My two friends, spare me an hour with you
At the open country, to fulfill a need and bid farewell,

2. Do not hurry me to mount a thin she-camel,
For the dignity that appeared to me in the white desert plain.

3. And say to a heart that asked love to return
And to an eye, "Shed for me your tears or hold them back!"

4. For there is no life except a life like one we had-
A summer we spent after the square building.

5. The thousands of pilgrims dispersed over Mina
And were scattered by the pebbles thrown at the pillars.

6. So I did not see a house like it, the house of happiness,
Or a place of meeting when the pilgrims gather at the mosque.

7. Staying there made one content in his place,
While most neighbors, not having said farewell, moved away.

8. In the morning one cannot find a tent that was pitched
With its pegs and ropes still fixed.

9. They were hard on you when they all traveled separate ways
Hastily, and left the dwellings of Balqa'.

10. Some of them journeying through a palm tree valley
Others traversing the back of an interceding mount,

11. Like the camel litters of the living tribe when they moved on,
The cry of a palm tree or the cry of a howdah.

12. My life, shall I show you those who departed
Going their ways early yesterday morning?

13. They rode submissively on nimble camels,
White, running, with outstretched necks.

14. Their howdahs swaying on a lover who scales the hills,
Who made the open spaces of Buḥayrah their place,

15. And in them are does, who pasture at night,
Gentle, white, without any sign of being restricted.

16. The daughter of Ḍumayrī ‛Izzah shot at me when
The boy finished with what the feathers shooter shoots.

17. She bandies words with me, yet does not understand
Along with miserliness, conversation that twists and turns.

18. She can be recognized if she gets lost, and guided to her Lord
By a sign of four teats from which she gives milk.

19. She is praised at the resting places of the outgoers and dawn visitors
With two drinking bowls which she obtained from the purified drinking bowls.

20. When they both reached the utmost extent of their ability
And caused her hair to flow down in tangles and tears...