1. O star, how I approach you yet you recede
As if you were the far twinkling Pleiades

2. You burn my heart with the fire of estrangement, intentionally
Why then does my heart show patience and perseverance?

3. There is no sanctioned killing of a lovesick youth in sacred law
By God, Muhammad would never approve of that

4. Your sickly eyelids have made me sick
Come back to me, again and again I am inured to return

5. In my heart for you there is ardour and gloom
Both are the inextinguishable fire

6. So the gazelle and the bending branch vie
And the sun at dawn competes for your envy

7. You who dazzled the beholder with your beauty
You have no peer or match to be found

8. O sleepy-eyed one whose estrangement
Keeps the eyelids of your lover from rest

9. By the stars in the dark night you can find your way
While I am lost in love, beyond guidance

10. When you are absent from me
Only copious tears for my love I have

11. Who will join me when we are together
In the cup from which religious duties tremble

12. The colour from it in the cups is pink
And so are my tears on my eyelids

13. They have met in you the rhythm of their passion
And seen your acceptance, which to them is most generous

14. Why is your heart unrelenting when you are so
Gentle you can almost be unraveled and tied

15. How can I escape when your glance is arrows
Your stature a spear and your eyelids sharp swords

16. Your eyebrow is a bow that with a wink from you
I am transfixed, unable to get up and go

17. The ardent lover is blinded by passion and deafened
So the slave becomes the master in this way

18. And of wonders is that the lion becomes
Under passion's reign hunted by a thin gazelle