1. Your love kept me awake through the long night
A raven cries sorrowfully on a bending branch

2. Beating its wings harshly crying
Weeping with two eyes that do not neglect

3. In the raven's croaks there is estrangement
And in the bending branch a far removed separation

4. By my life if your eyelids startle
To a teardrop whose flow does not cease

5. It is right that your eyes do not dry
Their tears as they brim

6. And whoever was near you yesterday
Is now far away

7. Can you o life return
To your beautiful blessed days

8. O our life though desire still flourishes
With a green branch and a bending trunk

9. Perhaps youth and its meadows
Will darken what the two visitors have whitened

10. Alas o life you cannot return
With your drooping branches

11. Old age has ruptured what is between us
And the Yemeni cloak has ruptured between you and I

12. Peace be upon you, through how many nights
Passionate, erring, unruly

13. I entertained vain desire on both its sides
With the beating of drums and the playing of reed pipes

14. And a virgin whom the water drawers did not squeeze
Nor did the drinking company violate in the tavern

15. Nor did feet trample her clusters
Nor did hands brand her with fire

16. But her udders nourished her
Embraced by two streams

17. Until puberty turned away from her
And the two wet nurses weaned her

18. I imagined her while she was tucked away
Her saliva oozing during the hour

19. Her offspring's bunches tucked
Flowing like red blood

20. The sun kept itself busy
Dyeing them in the ink pots

21. Decanting them for the garments of men
Until the two cupbearers came to her

22. And they undid the seals from a belle
Chaste from an active stud a protector

23. An old woman musk is her cheeks
Her skin dyed with saffron

24. A one-eyed man circles her around us
His hands dyed red from the cup

25. Nights he counts for me from my years
Eight and one and two

26. A young boy, a brother of mischief
Flies with me to desire two birds

27. With a flowing loincloth, eyes that flirt
Upon me are two gowns from the days of youth

28. I commit sins and do not guard
Against the punishment written by the two scribes

29. Eyes of men compete over me
And they stumble into my allure blindly

30. So they shortened when old age prohibited me
And those who blamed shortened blaming me

31. Some eyes have healed and their peers
I appeal to them but they refuse my place

32. When youth flew away
Like two ravens from my parting two birds

33. A woman saw a man marked by years
With the shame of old age and shame of time

34. So she turned away and said, “O brother of grey hair
Destitute, how miserable are the two states”

35. I said, “Thus is the one whom
The days have bitten with its canines and claws”

36. And I came back to a camel, firm
Spacious, the paddock of the beautiful stud

37. Lofty of hand, ambitious of spirit
Twisted of nature and innards

38. So I wedged its saddle’s pegs with it
And its canines bit from the blows of two threshers

39. When it straightened its limbs
And became smooth in travel after some weariness

40. I travelled great distances with it in the Levant
Misleading the two guides

41. To a king from the clan of Hashim
Noble of taxes, pure of lineage

42. To the standard of might in his palm
From generosity two flowing springs