Sol 5.6

  1. Has the camel-driver stirred her? What ails her?

    Yet when he urged her fellows onward, he did not stir them.

  2. Have you learned, Hudhaym, what afflicts her,

    and what has bequeathed her all this turmoil?

  3. He sang to her of Rāma and the river-bend,

    and of the dwellings, calling their deserted traces to mind.

  4. He never knew what anguish he had awakened,

    nor what tears his mention made her shed.

  5. He reminded her of her camping ground at Rāma,

    and the thought of Rāma became her haunting vision.

  6. He reminded her of pastures fragrant with wormwood,

    and of her watering there, from its limpid water.

  7. At al-ʿUdhayb she tasted its sweet, wholesome water,

    but afterward was made to taste its bitter bane.

  8. Had any bond but longing been her hobble,

    at Mayy's abode she would have cast her hobble off.

  9. She asks the weathered traces about her loved ones,

    but none among those vestiges answered her question.

  10. Whenever love's anniversary returned to her,

    its recurrence stirred all her turmoil anew.

  11. By God, she never ceases—though you might think her,

    from the wasting that afflicts her, a mere phantom—

  12. eager to encounter faces

    that the turns of separation carried far off and stole away.

  13. They were the departing women who struck their tents

    and, on separation's day, drove their camels forth.

  14. They kindled, in the heart of every enamored lover,

    fires of longing whose flames blaze fiercely.

Sol 5.6