عج بالمطي في أظعانها — Abn Alsaati

Turn aside with the riding camels amid her caravan—

her whose fingertips are dyed with nothing but my blood.

A sun revealed herself, while parting was dark gloom,

and the stars of tears fell from her eyelids.

The lovers' tears froze upon her throat,

or the strand of her pearls melted within the eyelids.

She cannot be matched by any likeness

in her complexion, her stature, and her suppleness.

So death—utter death—bars the way to union with her,

and death—utter death—lies in separation from her.

And my affliction is the spear's sister: her stature

is like its stature, and her glances like its spearpoint.

At Rama, each thing is guarded by its like,

among all the languid eyes and their spearpoints.

So brown spears guard the acacias that the east wind bends,

and white swords guard the glances of its gazelles.

By all three I am tormented as long as I live:

by their spears, the women's figures, and its bān trees.

They are veiled: moons within their halos;

and they walk swaying: branches amid their sand dunes.

So I clothed myself in my body's ailments,

and lost all of my liver save its throbbing.

My soul had no further need of my body,

but for its tenderness toward its native homes.

I was distracted from everyone; some of what

I endured distracts the eye from its own pupil.

And indeed they saddled the pale camels, forging through the darkness,

as though they were human beings within their halters.

The full moon of night and its stars appear to them,

and they take it for a dark-lipped maiden among her companions.

They see the night's lightning, flashing swiftly,

and mistake it for flames flaring from her fires.

A tender maiden appeared in beauty, as though the world

had appeared in its sultan's finery.

And her eye's glances upon her lovers

are like his swords, assailing the world's vicissitudes.