1. How can I forget you, O Abu Bakr, or how
Can my patience about you be good?

2. You are where my looks are directed, in the blackness of my eye,
And my heart is an actor that does not depart.

3. And why the sorrow while we are like a journey
Some of us traveling and some descending?

4. The early ones got married, and the last one
To them, after a little while, will arrive.

5. And to where the first people got married
Is our appointment, and from it the return.

6. I talk about you to my soul, appeasing it,
But can a bereaved woman be appeased?

7. If I advise her to be patient, she yearns
Like a young camel yearns for her calf.

8. If she looks at him, she does not recognize him,
And youthfulness and sickness make her lean.

9. And I have clear despair about death,
But my state of passion does not change.

10. I yearn for my father Abu Bakr, but I
Have no way to see him in this life.

11. What clear despair,
Opposed by beautiful patience!

12. Yearning for him overcomes my reason,
Undefeated by minds.

13. It makes me forget the certainty of despair from him,
Like liquor makes one forget.

14. Sleep troubles my worry,
While the uninvited sorrow keeps me up at night,

15. As if my night stars are tied down,
Never moving from their places.

16. The morning brings me no relief,
But the sickly weak person takes its excuse.

17. My day does not agree with me, nor distract me,
And my night does not part from me with crying.