1. My friend counsels me: "You're lovesick with yearning!
For the one you love - my friend doesn't lie.

2. How long will you weep over traces
Scoured by the south winds, crying out in anguish?

3. Turn your gaze from ancient ruins,
For seeking them has led you to ruin.

4. Phantom encampments shimmer before your eyes,
Now vanishing, now shimmering into view.

5. You’re startled by what you see of a house’s vestige,
And your heart leaps up like lightning’s flashing glare.

6. So rein in your heart when a glimmer appears
And a wind stirs for your sight.

7. Of your afflictions, complain not to the ruins -
Keep your torment to yourself, make no lament.

8. For time has erased their vestiges from the living,
And the one you loved is gone like them.

9. Lines have been erased from a book,
And though I gloss them, their meaning is obscure.

10. The ships of the House of Mays have sailed away,
At rest now, while the lover has no rest.

11. I said “Yes, though my eyelids ache with tears
And my heart is deeply wounded,

12. I will go to their dwellings at dawn and dusk -
Dusk and dawn, I wander, Hudhaym.

13. If the clouds rain down, if my eyes rain down,
I see which of the two is more miserly.

14. So let me, Hudhaym, be with them - perhaps
I’ll die of love and find peace.”