ندىً بلّل الخدّين

Dew on Her Cheeks

1. Dew wet her cheeks, the sky was pouring rain,
   and down her locks of hair came streaming, as the torrents pour.
2. And then her neck: the Pleiades¹ of her earrings travelled far
   to reach its base, and dazzled like the brightest stars.
3. And on her soft, fresh cheeks there lay a drizzle of dew,
   as though a molten silver dripped from them, drop after drop.
4. Her sheer dress clung across her breasts, soaked through and through
   by a raincloud of longing² in its steady pour.
5. I marvelled at a dress that, people say, conceals her form:
   what ails it³, that wherever it conceals, it shows the more?
6. Her supple, slender form⁴, with all her clothes wrapped close about it,
   was like the most bewitching lure a woman tempts you with, and holds you captive.
7. I stopped for her; the cold had set her teeth to chattering,
   and wrapped her in my shawl, if it could cover her at all.
8. I set her up on my mount's⁵ back; she was afraid, I thought,
   but on that day she had no other refuge.
9. I calmed her, till my kindness set her mind at rest,
   and drove away her fear of what she had been wary of.
10. I asked her which way lay her house, so I could take her there,
    and all the while my eyes kept gazing on her beauty.
11. The raincloud that had poured so hard was still,
    but beauty's cloud kept pouring as before.
12. She showed me to the house, and there I said:
    “How many houses hide a full moon's twin indoors!”
13. And then I told her, “From now on, if you should venture out,
    then cover up, so nothing of your body shows.”
14. “But why?” she asked. I said, “The clouds have such a way:
    when they see beauty such as yours, they wring⁶ themselves, and pour,
15. and rain down in their longing, to wet the charms that show in you,
    and never hang back, never make excuse.
16. If one like me could not restrain himself,
    then what of a cloud, that's only water turned to vapour, nothing more?
17. So, by God, keep some part of your beauty guarded,
    so that the cloud lets only some come down, not all it has in store.”
18. Her only answer was that laugh, which to this day
    I can't forget; and, swaying proudly, she replied:
19. “My beauty will not stay a prisoner beneath its wrap,
    and I don't care about the clouds: if they would drench me, let them pour.”
20. Then off she went towards a grand house.
    I called, “My shawl!”, and back she came, buttoning the dress she wore,
21. and threw the shawl to me. How fine the gift the shawl brought back:
    wet through, it was more fragrant⁷ than perfume ever was before!

English translation prepared by artificial intelligence and reviewed against the Arabic for accuracy of meaning and rhetoric.