In his contribution to the Mu'allaqat, al-Qais describes a character stopping for a time at the ruins of a campsite and remembering his beloved in the ruins. He opens by describing the desolate place, broken and overgrown by nature:

The traces of her encampment are not wholly obliterated even now.

…

The courtyards and enclosures of the old home have become desolate;

The dung of the wild deer lies there thick as the seeds of pepper.

(The Mu’allaqah of Imru al-Qais)

The word wuquf that gives the trope its name holds the double meaning of 'standing' and 'stopping', so this portion of the poem usually forms a moment of stillness and meditation, outside of time. The landscape comes to represent loss and longing, a container for memory. After reminiscing about his beloved, al-Qais’s character is brought back to the present by a flash of lightning:

But come, my friends, as we stand here mourning, do you see the lightning?

See its glittering, like the flash of two moving hands, amid the thick gathering clouds.

Another great master of poetry was Tarafa, a near-contemporary of al-Qais whose poem was also included in the collection of the Mu’allaqat. Imitating al-Qais, Tarafa’s poem opens with ruins appearing on the horizon like an apparition:

The ruins Khawla left

on the mottled flatlands of Thimhad

appear and fade, like the trace of a tattoo

on the back of a hand.

(The Mu’allaqah of Tarafa)

The 'appearance' of the ruins carries the same sense as an apparition: dreamlike and strange, lingering on the horizon.