Sol 6.1

  1. How many ruined traces of a dwelling al-Mulāʾa has,

    At al-ʿAnbariyya, like worn-out parchment!

  2. I stood among them; they were speechless, not speaking to me.

    And what use is your questioning a trace after years?

  3. The sun's radiance could not bring the heart to its senses,

    Until, with difficulty, I set off after late afternoon.

  4. As though a kohl-eyed doe had struck my two eyes,

    In the dwelling, from a herd streaming by the water.

  5. Or like Ibn ʿAjlān, when she was his ruin—

    Hind of all Hinds, by destiny and appointed times.

  6. She shoots at hearts, yet no one captures her,

    With a huntress's arrow, deadly to men.

  7. Slender at the sash, yet the girdle about her

    Is wound around sand-dunes with swelling haunches.

  8. No mother of a fawn in the meadows of al-Dhihāb, with

    Her own pasture, solitary apart from her herd-mates, with her young,

  9. A pale doe, whose two horns, when she slips in, shake

    The arak and branches of dāl away from her;

  10. Nor a garlanded meadow for which al-Simāk came at evening,

    In the last moonless nights before the crescent's rise.

  11. A dark-lipped woman bares the mouth's two front teeth, white as hail,

    With dusky gums, and a neck not bare of adornment.

  12. She lights no fire except to kindle it

    With aloeswood, in her costly silk house-robe.

  13. And perfume grows more fragrant from being upon her;

    And if she forgoes it, she does so without becoming scentless.

Sol 6.1