[p. 129]
1. Let me never forget my abode at Wána and my saying to camel-riders as they departed and arrived,
2. ‘Stay beside us a while that we may be comforted thereby, for I swear by those whom I love that I am consoled (by thinking of you).’
3. If they set out they will journey with the most auspicious omen, and if they halt they will alight at the most bountiful halting-place.
4. ’Twas in the glen of the valley of Qanát I met them, and my last sight of them was between an-Naqá and al-Mushalshal.
5. They watch every place where the camels find pasturage, but they pay no heed to the heart of a lover led astray.
6. O camel-driver, have pity on a youth whom you see breaking colocynth when he bids farewell,
7. Laying his palms crosswise on his bosom to still a heart that throbbed at the noise of the (moving) howdah.
8. They say, ‘Patience!’ but grief is not patient. What can I do, since patience is far from me?
9. Even if I had patience and were ruled by it, my soul would not be patient. How, therefore, when I have it not?
1. ‘Wána,’ i.e… the station of confession and shortcoming and failure to pay due reverence to the majesty of the Divine presence.
‘Camel-riders,’ i.e. the saints and favourites of God (###).
5. ‘Every place where the camels find pasturage,’ i.e. the objects to which our aspirations tend.
6. ‘O camel-driver’: he addresses the Divine voice which calls the aspirations towards it.
7. ‘Breaking colocynth,’ i.e. having his face distorted with anguish (for when colocynth is broken its pungent smell [p. 130] causes the eyes to water). Imru’u ’l-Qays says (cf. Ahlwardt, The Díwáns, 204, No. 26): ###