Sol 5.6

  1. And Marr Tubbaʿ, from the sand’s downslope at al-Ḥimā,

    is girdled about by a lush, fertile valley.

  2. ʿAmyāʾ alights there, and she is dear

    to me; her dwelling, too, is dear to me.

  3. When she trails her skirts through its open courts,

    I find the soil of those dwellings turning fragrant.

  4. Poetry grows sweet within my soul whenever she delights me with it,

    though no love-prelude had ever seemed sweet to me.

  5. And when she saw gray begin to thread my locks,

    she turned away, as a wolf startles a gazelle.

  6. We had been like two boughs of a ben tree, wholesome at the root:

    both grew tall—but one is withered, the other fresh.

  7. Why, then, does she cast at me a glance

    with which hatred dallies, and which awakens mistrust?

  8. As though I had invented gray hair—or as though among mankind

    there were no tresses touched with gray at their tips!

  9. No wonder I should be clothed in aversion by budding maidens:

    the mantle of my youth lies plundered in their keeping.

Sol 5.6