1. O dwelling of the clan, may the clouds visit you at dawn,

    though your campsite and abode lie desolate.

  2. Had sorrows not exhausted all my tears,

    I would have said: May my streaming tears water you.

  3. I passed by their dwelling, and I was brought to a halt

    at that dwelling by yearning and passionate love.

  4. O days of intimate companionship, upon you from me

    may greetings and peace alight.

  5. I question the dwelling, though mine is a wounded heart—

    but do dwellings know what speech is?

  6. Will the days of union return to us,

    that the love-distraught may delight in reunion,

  7. amid radiant stars and suns of beauty,

    and moons whose rising places are the tents?

  8. When will a sorrowful man forget his yearning,

    when sidelong glances and graceful forms have afflicted him?

  9. When passion possesses the tormented lover's heart,

    the least of what he suffers is reproach.

  10. Love is stirred in me by the fragrance of a breeze

    breathed in, and by the flash of lightning espied.

  11. The dove grieves me whenever it sings;

    every sorrowing soul is stirred by the dove.

  12. And grief strikes fire in me for the day when

    the noble sons of Fatima were struck down,

  13. and for a calamity that kindles sparks in every heart,

    setting its searing inner grief ablaze.

  14. O son of those who raised a pavilion of glory

    whose pillars towered above al-Ḍarāḥ, the heavenly sanctuary!

  15. Can arrows and keen-edged blades truly stain

    a countenance before which the full moon pales?

  16. Would that the white swords had lost their edges

    and the arrows had flown wide of their marks.

  17. It was as though you were a watering place and the swords were thirsty,

    thronging together to drink from your lifeblood.

Sol 5.6