1. She whom I hated returned to me, trying to win my affection,
Alas! Who could make an enemy into a lover?

2. She returned to find me gray-haired,
While she was still youthful, time had changed her to grayness.

3. It was as if I saw in her suddenly,
On the day of union, a spy from the lover.

4. I wished her rise clouded,
Frowning at people, had been a sunset.

5. You were a disease to me, but I could not find,
Among the remedies of men, a cure for your sickness.

6. I wish the past time, when I had
No intimacy with you, and I was set free from you.

7. O would that he who ordained the meeting between us
Had made parting from the meeting near.

8. A time when, if she visited me smiling,
She was morose, and if she joined me she was sullen.

9. It was as if my heart, though unshaken,
Was filled to overflowing by your nearness.

10. Had you not been unique in time
My eyes would not have seen in it anything unique.

11. And I spent all my life free from sin,
And made you for it sinful against me.

12. And you left scars and wounds on my skin
While time left none but the unharmed.

13. And I met in you strange tribulations,
And suffered the most painful kinds of affliction.

14. And you left my heart inconsolable with anguish,
And my eyelids unable to cease weeping.

15. It was as if, when I unwillingly took you,
My fortune was denied, and I got no share.

16. Had you been but a single fault I would have endured you,
But you were, altogether, faults.