Sol 6.1

  1. The daughter of al-Ghawthi says, “What brings you here,

    when you are a Tamimi, whose homeland lies in the east?”

  2. She alerts me before the evening departure, when already close

    is parting—may neither it nor its approach come near!

  3. I said to her, “Needs toss a young man about,

    and a care beset me, its riding camels wearied.

  4. I did not visit Salma because she was beloved

    to me, nor for a debt of hers that I was claiming.”

  5. And how many governors’ tents they passed,

    on their way to you, and how many wastes whose foxes howled to one another!

  6. From where the desert’s winds have died, the sandgrouse keep

    flying alongside me, their water-seekers fearing death.

  7. And water whose flow seemed stirred with washing herbs—

    its drinker grimaces at its color and taste—

  8. I reached it while the heart of night lay bewildered and still

    over it, with its stars already about to sink.

  9. I cut through its trough’s sides for their jaws,

    and its sides soaked up the moisture from the worn bucket.

  10. They bent their foreleg knees, as though their sipping were

    the sipping of a rain-drenched drinker, vying to snatch a rock-pool’s water.

Sol 6.1