1. What stirred your longing among the sites of an old encampment,

    and dwellings whose decay pierced the heart?

  2. A home of Safra, whom you never cease

    remembering, and never forget.

  3. Long-necked, her bedfellow folds her, and she folds,

    like a sword-belt, her back supple on either side.

  4. The sister of Banu Lu'ayy caught you when she shot,

    yet your arrow struck true when you shot at someone else.

  5. Time lent her affection from you,

    while another was lent her love and passion.

  6. That is the wrong I have known; would that she,

    when I was fettered, had drawn near despite her remoteness.

  7. Fair-skinned, she steals men's reason;

    her hips are full and her waist slender.

  8. As though the taste of ginger and the pleasure

    of tawny wine had been brushed upon her mouth by the dawn-server.

  9. O longing, what ailed you the day their howdahs departed

    from Dhu al-Muwayqi' at dawn, and he saw her?

  10. As though palms stood in Mutiyah,

    at al-Kam', between its low ground and its edges.

  11. Upon the camels, when they tired under one driver,

    they made another dismount at evening, and he sang them onward.

  12. Some drooped their necks, while another's gait

    was a swift trot when her goad was raised over him.

  13. Among them a maiden like an oryx, and a young full-breasted woman

    whose youth luxury had enhanced and nourished.

  14. No wealthy but base man, nor a slave-woman's son,

    with his glans exposed, may violate her sanctuary.

  15. Nor did they make the armed man's shield-rest

    the spur of al-Yatimah, or bed down on its curving sands.

  16. They went upstream through the valley of Uthaydah, after

    he had traversed the thicket and its cairns had risen high.

  17. The summer sojourn had snared Qurayyah, while her people

    were within Ma'ab, where the palaces of its Fara are seen.

  18. Your people settled Dhu al-Qutud and Ghurrab,

    then al-Sahsahan—how far from you is her abode!

  19. When her image wanders bewildered in the heart,

    the tear ducts choke with tears, and he weeps for her.

  20. Will you not forget her with one of enduring strength,

    a sturdy she-camel, still imposing when journeys wear her thin?

  21. She folds the hills away when the desert blazes,

    like folding a coarse cloak, with the quick return of her steps.

  22. She raises, fearing the man to her right, a hanging tail,

    thick-haired, which shields her when the flies buzz.

  23. Trailing long and supple-jointed; above it

    is a solid tailbone, filling the hollow between her hipbones.

  24. Her rump is braced by it, with vertebrae like

    stairs built by Solomon the prophet.

  25. She is built upon a paunch, whose coils are like

    doubled ropes, their strands twisted taut,

  26. in a roomy, spreading-ribbed body, as though

    her sides were a human answering those who speak.

  27. Her shoulder muscles lead the joined bones of her spine

    at a swift pace, her forelegs vying for speed.

  28. Her hindlegs drive the rear of her frame

    onward, while pebbles strike against her leg-bones.

  29. She dropped her unborn calf upon the back of the road,

    in a barren wilderness where sandgrouse pass to and fro.

  30. She went on at dawn, while it lay at the night's resting-place,

    like a puppy, wrapped in her afterbirth.

  31. She has a kneeling-place where she seldom knelt,

    and tapered pellets, daughters of her intestines,

  32. black twins from what remained inside her,

    which she cast upon the earth after her night journey.

  33. Until, when the haze of his sleep cleared

    from him—it had been a need, and he had satisfied it—

  34. he reached down to bind his head with a turban,

    grimy, which he had not folded when he slept.

  35. Then he went straight to the halter of a kneeling camel,

    broad-bellied, her belly tightened by his two girths.

  36. She went forth, tugging the braided rein against him, as though she were

    a wild she-ass whose foal the beasts of prey had eaten.

  37. Until, when she despaired and her udder dried,

    and saw what remained of its torn body, which grieved her,

  38. she grew restless; a stallion of wild she-asses crossed her path,

    hoarse in his neighing; she turned away, and he followed her.

  39. They passed between them a mantle of dust,

    white and freshly made, which the two had woven.

  40. It folds when they climb hard ground,

    and when their hooves reach soft ground, they spread it out.

  41. He pressed on, and she held firm against him at her pace

    over two rises; then he turned her back and redirected her

  42. to a valley-bottom where al-Rabiq had gathered its flood-debris,

    dark-green, its soil clothed in fresh grass beneath dry stems.

  43. They spent the summer there, both awakening

    with muzzles wet from the dripping of its dew,

  44. until he felt summer's blazing heat, and there failed him

    even his most lasting drinking-place, while its tangled growth turned gray.

  45. Dust settled upon the cairns, and the two remembered

    the waters of al-Manazir, its wells and pools.

  46. He cried aloud, urging her on; before him lay

    a wilderness cut with passes, which the two traversed,

  47. until at evening he reached the water of a copious spring,

    where frogs croak in the pool of its stagnant water.

  48. They took two breaths' worth of water, then turned away,

    glad, after drinking their fill, to leave it.

Sol 6.1