1. O gentle water, if my beloved were to bathe
Your ponds would be wine cups for me

2. The passionate never swerves from love's ways
Even if blame is a piercing sword

3. How can I be joyous when my hearing grasps
Only the moaning of doves or a dove's weeping

4. It's as though my heart has drawn its veil
To block out the reproaches of blamers

5. I have laid myself bare before joy -
It sparked no desire to settle and remain

6. It doesn't harm one who visits the jealous before their eyes
If he visits in a dream robe

7. Be content with passion if you wish to see
The glance of the doe and the comforts of meadows

8. And pause before the gazes of the lovely-eyed - between them
Is an image that permits idol-worship

9. We have struggled with poisoned windows
And I wished that I could kiss the archer's arrow

10. Our hands would be stained with henna
Whose likeness in the heart is a slumbering love

11. Veils are not as their name, but rather
On the day of farewell they are sheaths for arrows

12. Between me and the gazelles is an appointed time
That delivers the reins into my aged palm

13. The visiting apparition does not cease from my bed -
From me - and in my breast are wings of darkness

14. Time has two qualities that tint however long -
Both with dawn and nightfall

15. You were once an unkempt, disheveled lock
With what water did you become the shining part?

16. Do the nights continue to plead after
My wickedness and nudity have bound their hands?

17. My mounts graze the meadows of Iraq
While my resolves herd the fields of Damascus

18. I have in the bellies of twisting sands a reserve
That waters when the meadows of the covetous deceive

19. And when the cheating horizons unleash the morning
The gazelles incline from a vanishing clime

20. How many estranged beasts has the desert misled -
Their obligation returned to the predators

21. When I took contentment's lead rope in hand
My ambition equaled my journey and my stay

22. So in my eyes the ruins are like palaces
My rising like my settling, ecstasy like oblivion

23. I found this age utterly confused
Rebuking the insolent with the mooing of cattle

24. Their forms are insensible in their arenas
And their hearts destitute of understanding

25. It's enough that among them I've become distinguished
With you, oh Abu Al-Hasan, my twin and my counterpart

26. One heavily clouded night she carried us
The mother of perfections bore the perfect pair

27. And the wet nurse of glory undertook our suckling
Two spans that none can tally before weaning

28. Until manners girded their belt
And were wed to the scent of noble noses

29. They seize the first fruits of meanings wherever
They unleash pillage - though it isn't illicit

30. This is the pure lineage - as for others
They fabricate uncles and cousins

31. If the blade of my brother were to rust
I would polish it with connection and completion

32. But estrangement's fire melts its edge
And I avert my mouth from the tester

33. You are my day - my remembering and pondering
My night - my dreams and the phantom of my sleep

34. If people are a system of outstanding deeds
You were the system, the model of each system

35. I fall short of your preceding steeds
A lame man on the day of the race course