1. Youth has departed and old age has come nigh,
I see no remnant of departed youth.

2. Darkness has returned to whiteness where it parted,
No welcome to you, O hue that followed after.

3. Every day it shows me some mark
That almost makes me weep with sadness.

4. Would that youth were a lasting friend,
If only some of what is past could return!

5. When her temples turned white, how evil she was!
Neither love nor kindness do I know in her.

6. Had she given notice at first I'd have said to her,
"Gently, slowly, Malik's confidante!" Or even, "Halfway!"

7. Were it not for her children and people's talk
I'd not have turned to censure her; base is the love that is forced.

8. So I shall not cease, though outwardly flattering,
Bitterly blaming her though not with frown or grimace,

9. Nor lover, like a worn-out mat with,
On its borders, the dung of camels.

10. There peck at it the dung-beetles
Now bent over, now crawling sluggishly.

11. The workers left upon it, the weavers,
Of ravellings on its edges, tufts.

12. It misleads the lost, unrecognized stragglers,
When its echoing roar comes on them suddenly.

13. It is submissive, humble, if a plain stretch near it;
It swerves aside. Through it the wild ass,

14. Passes joyously, until he turns left:
The does have passed leaving no trace behind.

15. It waters slender, hidden, that murmur
As foreign rabble reciting the parchments.

16. Gazelles whose eyes in their sockets
Look behind, seeking the sperm-drops.

17. Bay camels whose girths, like the swelling clouds,
Covered above the eyebrows from what was knotted.

18. One day I passed Womamah. I walked when
The tambourine player began to beat time.

19. I charged the "alas" of the two encampments, chanting,
Vying toward evening with a moaner.

20. Did separation from her persist after she was worn threadbare,
Becoming confused and intermixed abundantly?

21. She escapes and her braids drip down upon a neck
Like a sapling from which its leaves were stripped.

22. As if my riding beast, its saddle worn out
Were clothed with a coverlet by its owner in patches.

23. It crosses a desolate land where yet are
Traces of jinn and a pact struck between them long ago.

24. Overhanging rocks point out to it
What they suppose in the cooking pots to be left as scraps.

25. A shade beneath the blower's leather bag the day they
Sift the flour's bran and its coarseness.

26. And they buy, until when their snouts grow green
They do not abstain from sleep a moment.

27. Like ostriches they fly, swerving, hastily,
And do not light till they stick nose first.

28. Like the Ethiopians, fearing their lord's
Punishment, so they fled after being confined.

29. Like the two stammerers, when they straighten up, mounting,
They disdain not the orators' pulpits.

30. It took her unawares when she was heedless
Until she saw him and he had fulfilled her wish.

31. She bared two columns of twisted fiber
As if the side of a parchment scroll were stripped off.

32. She approached the wings and shoulders of her mate
Humbly bending toward her, supple of shoulder.

33. Such she was, inviolate,
Though the like of her might for him be sought.