1. Alas! Would that my heart were steadfast
Stricken with yearning or struck by desires

2. Grief has weighed upon me until, overwhelmed with sorrow
My eyes overflowed with crimson tears

3. Memories provoke laughter from me
And passion excites the birds' trilling

4. So I weep for the ardour and fervour in me
And for when I see others weeping on earth

5. Think not I shed tears out of habit
Or recite poetry heedlessly

6. Rather it is my soul, when turmoil churns it
And care floods over it, pouring out verse

7. The deceit of one's heart is hard to bear
Though one may deceive the world and hide away

8. I sought a comforter in adversity but missed him
Who consoles you needs you as comforter

9. One the tribulations have not torn with their fangs
Thinks souls' complaints are mere grumbling

10. Cast out from the world, though with but little
I'd have cast the days away and turned them into nights

11. So let none other bewail misfortune, for I
Have guaranteed calamities and monopolized disasters

12. The nights pass, night after night
While my heart's sorrows remain as they are

13. Would that wine or the cold touch of a loved one were mine
I'd be solaced, but my nation and country

14. When a breeze blows from the orient
I tremble and clutch my robe

15. I yearn for those melodies and their singers
And long like those who long for those songs

16. It brings me no joy that frivolities abound
While in the East are folk who know not frivolity

17. When sleep takes my eyelids captive
I spend the evening awake and restless

18. How can a man rejoice with no loved ones about him
Who finds no relish in intimate chats?

19. The world has changed from peace to turmoil
And its wise sons have become vagabonds

20. The dust-cloud brings forth naught but calamity
The stars rain down nothing but pestilence

21. Even the night has denied its flowers of stars
And meadow dew its graceful gazelles

22. A road where a youth once freely walked
Is now patrolled by an army marching warily

23. The ways between them and me are cut off
They cannot come to me, nor I go to them

24. We found in books relief from grief
And in the lightning flashes neared the far horizon

25. Now secrets are not safe in the wires from a pilferer
Nor news secure in the radio waves from a propagator

26. When it is said this is an informant, I turn my ear to him
Though the speaker be suspect and dubious

27. And my soul knows he has no knowledge
Yet I repel despair, hopeful

28. Doubt has spread until we believe no narrator
And distrust has grown until we deny every narrator

29. I spend my day wandering, distraught
And cut through my night, brooding and awake

30. They are not dead, for me to weep over them
Nor living, that I might hope to meet them again

31. It is as though they were driven from their homes
Barefoot, naked, and hungry, seeking quarry