1. I sent my messenger asking when we'd meet
She answered, my friend, when will your guarantor return?

2. As he tarried long, boiling with fury,
Patience counseled me not to change my mind

3. After the pilgrims prayed on Mount Arafat
Can we live by her laws and my messenger?

4. No union comes but a smile or a glance
Unless it comes from a slender, supple neck

5. Dreams still lead me to meet her
Guiding me until I found my way

6. With her kindness I'm welcomed and greeted
By a forgetful one in Ishmael's lap

7. I said enter but she said does a meeting ensure
A night's stay? How often we've missed it at bedtime

8. I was gentle, sought no quarrel for I
Was created to love without fleck or stain

9. When the folly of passion and youth confused me
I clasped her waist, a soft, blind clasp

10. I could not possess her but by an encircled waist
That sways like prey in a miser's right hand

11. If I gained access to a kissable brow
No access was granted to all-embracing hugs

12. I bound and humbled my pride, would that
From her lower lip I could heal my pain

13. I only gathered from her coy reproaches
And my apology in humiliating submission

14. Or else tears whose secret Allah knows
Why did they flow from a boonmate to boonmate?

15. Let these tears startle me, were they not
The effect of a meeting with an intimate friend?

16. Then do not hide your love if you have divined it
Behind blue eyes when I come before you

17. You tantalized me an age, when you seduced me
I attained favors and awaited my undoing

18. An stolen kiss offended you though I battled it
With a glance of youthful charm from a fawn

19. A boy stays free until the day he is confined
To kindness fair or a hand unkind