Sol 5.6

  1. By your life, Nawar has indeed been ruined and driven away

    to al-Ghawr by counsels with little sense.

  2. Facing caravans in the month of Nājir,

    she rides a bare packsaddle while her guide crosses the open waste.

  3. I never feared, when she took me as husband and called witnesses

    to bind herself to me, that her treachery would burst forth.

  4. After Nawar, could I ever trust another woman on the road

    not to betray me, so long as the dove’s cooing calls?

  5. Ah, would that I knew—when Nawar is alone

    with her purpose, will she truly discern her way?

  6. She obeyed the sons of Umm al-Nuyayr and by morning found herself

    astride an old gray she-camel—unruly for all its tameness.

  7. When she rides away, the beast makes travel hard for her; and if she makes it kneel,

    her dismounting from it will come only by God’s inescapable decree.

  8. Nawar has disdained in me the very thing

    that wives before her approved—may her journey come to grief.

  9. A woman of renowned forebears, no base-born woman,

    she healed my heart, then slaked her burning rancor on me.

  10. May the place toward which the cherished woman went never cease to be watered

    by the downpours of a cloud driven by the east wind, and all its runoff.

  11. She did not leave us from aversion to our company;

    it was only her demon that carried my cherished one away.

  12. A breath of the east wind recalls her fragrances to me,

    the scent of lavender, its dew and drenching damp.

  13. For any man who strives to turn my wife against me

    is like one approaching the lions of al-Sharā to collect their urine:

  14. before one reaches lions’ urine stand daunting ferocity

    and the charge of a mighty one, its long reach warding off all affront.

Sol 5.6