1. For one whose abode lies in ruins at Raqmatain, doleful and dejected am I,
Wrought upon it by the hands of time and fate, which make all lament and cry.

2. I stood by its side, while love wrote with tears, poured from my sad and yearning eye,
Its annals on the pages of my heart, and wove thereon its woes and agony.

3. I asked it of a love, but it answered me, from midst its ruins, naught but the moan and cry
Of dove that was bereft her nest and brood, and wildly wanders lonely, rueful, nigh.

4. She weeps and with tear- laden mourning, she tells her grievous tale unceasingly,
Not with a voice endowed with words or speech, but only through her plaintive, troubled cry.

5. And I replied to her, while my heart burned with fires enkindled ceaselessly,
"O dove, if you were like me athirst with love, you too would wail incessantly.

6. And had you lost a love like mine, never would you know tranquility.
Nor had you been calcined by passion's flames, and loved with love so fiercely

7. That into flaming brands it did your heart convert, your tears would so abound that like a sea
They’d seem, with surging waves that never dry, nor ebb at all despite their constancy."

8. Then in the darkness of the night, a ring dove sang on, musically,
Her roundelay of longing love, and told the tale of her adversity.

9. And I exclaimed, "O if, like me, you knew the loss of sleep and had to dree
The grief of long estrangement from your love, your eyes would overflow repeatedly

10. With tears unleashed like torrents from the clouds that hide within the heavens, loftily."
"Nor would you dwell serene within your bower, or preen its green and friendly branches joyfully,

11. Nor would your feet be stained with red anemones as down the valley’s slopes they fare so spry."
Unto you now, Abala, I say, “If but an apparition I could see

12. Come each month, solace it would be, and rest enough for me.”
Though from mine eyes you are forever hid, oh daughter Malik, verily

13. Your phantom image in my heart persists, so patent and so plain to see.
On the morrow, foemen shall your clan beleaguer, and shall undermine each fastness and each mighty tree,

14. Rending them down unto the dust despite their strength and proud austerity.
Yet think not that their armaments will daunt my soul, or shake my constancy,

15. For I will meet them with my stalwart men and turn their steeds in flight, so we
May feast our starveling swords with blood, and sate their thirst with enemy gore new-spilled as rills and streams that run afresh, swiftly.