راح الحمار وخلى القيد في الوتد

The donkey is gone, leaving the tether in the peg, and not a single person among the folk saw its trace.

Shall I ride a tent-peg after him, or will his halter suffice me if it were made of palm-fiber?

Or how shall I enter a house that was a dwelling for me, and settle within it like the lodging of a child?

I nurtured it with my hands like an infant out of sheer tenderness, like a child out of tenderness I nurtured it with my hands.

I fed it barley unmixed with dust or pure gold, fearing it might fall ill with colic.

Its braying would wake me whenever I grew heavy with sleep, sounding sweeter than a singing, trilling voice.

How often it turned me away from a narrow pass when it saw the beasts around it churning the earth into foam.

It carried me along a path whose edges the camel-drivers had moistened with rosewater while it was still dewy.

And how often it ran spiritedly when the distant wedding procession of a veiled bride came into view.

And when it beheld a funeral bier, it passed it by untouched by the cruel prodding in its flanks.

It never strayed a day from finding its trough, whether in a lush meadow or barren ground.

It never complained of a thorn-prick, nor did its legs grow weak in traversing rough country or smooth.

May the hands of whoever caused its loss be paralyzed, leaving me to walk and sink into the mud of this town.

Do you know that I am shattered after it, and that its parting is a fire upon my liver?

And that the crier's voice today is shouting: Put on your rags in the depth of the darkness and return.

Let not lush ease deceive you while you find it; the thief, my adversary regarding you, acts out of envy.

Standing firm for this appointed time you know well, as long as it stays a month by the roadside or hitching post.

May every runaway donkey be a ransom for you—one driven wild by petulance, or panting from fatigue, or exhausted from strain.

Or confused by lust, flicking its muzzle, kicking up old urine dried like hardened leather strips.

With a high-set head and slender limbs, it never turned stubborn when its worth was tested, nor did it fall short.

By my life, it knows the roads better than its master, and the knotted rope never held it back.

Would that I had a lock of its tail as a keepsake, to gaze upon as delicate maidens are gazed at.