1. A house was ruined after prosperity,
Remote and long separated from kinsfolk.

2. It lodged in Taima' among a people who,
When they gather in the morning, their crier calls to ruin.

3. And I have reveled in it while it was a rallying-place
For al-Kharj, then an-Nahy, then al-'Awra' and ad-Dam.

4. Until my sickness for it was healed,
And naught increases healing save sickness.

5. As if Jamra or, mayhap, 'Azza resembled it
To my eye the day we met at Arma.

6. Maytha poured on it a torrential rain,
So it became good for nothing through loss of years.

7. When its ground dried up, continuous rain wetted it
From a star that descended with pouring water.

8. None pastured it, so it remained wild a long time,
Preceded by an owl from the earth with flags.

9. You hear for its birds in its environs a warbling
As if their voices were the voices of dragging chains.

10. As if the wind of its chamomile and lavender
Were by night the wind of Yalnjawj and Ahdam.

11. Is it not folly in a hoary old man
To recall a playground of bygone days and years,

12. And a watering-place whose people did not sleep
For fear its bitter water was poisoned?

13. I would keep watch over it alone though the sounds
Of wild beasts in it would greet me at morn and dusk.

14. That was only my entering it furtively,
Then returning to the shelter of a perforated Mihjam.

15. I poured in its basin a skin to drink from
In the ruins of the encampments of A'dad's descendants.

16. But the water was foul, so it retched with its nozzle,
Then its spout continued pouring unchecked.

17. It acted as one acts who may not legally drink
Wine from a Nazarene's hand before Easter's end.

18. I cast it toward a land which casts it away from land
Until it was set down on the cisterns of Dirsam.