Sol 5.6

  1. Did your fiercely protective neighbors intend today

    to leave at evening—or did they mean to set out at dawn?

  2. Either hour is near; and if they part,

    the heart’s fissure will widen, spreading far—

  3. in my heart, whose fiercest foe is separation.

    Though separation has left me no neighbor at al-Jals,

  4. it has indeed left some neighbors around me—

    people with whom I am far from at ease.

  5. What use is any multitude of neighbors

    when the one you love departs and journeys away?

  6. I let my soul go freely as it yearns with longing,

    yet restrain it, out of modesty and a wish for concealment,

  7. as a herdsman, shooing, drives back from the pools

    of sweet water beasts parched with thirst and heat.

  8. Then, when I saw that lingering was helplessness,

    that I had a road of travel to take,

  9. and that the clan had hastened their parting

    and left our land for nothing but spite,

  10. my body stayed, while my heart went to see them off;

    and my eye never dries for them, but streams in torrents.

  11. I hold its tears back from my cheek,

    yet its tears refuse to do anything but stream down.

Sol 5.6