1. As if the songs, when obscured by nightfall,
Were remnants of psalms and hymns punctuated.

2. I recognized in them the traces of my tears at dusk,
Even if I denied it, the drizzle would testify.

3. Yearning for the fragrant meadows of Sullam,
As if the flowing silk has been mixed.

4. So if one day in Suwaqah I had been enabled,
I would have ordered but no singing girl drew her train.

5. I lost the suns of the visiting ones at dawn,
So neither their crescent shapes appeal to me.

6. The phantom did not cease its visitations to my heart,
But my tears have no shoreline to cross.

7. Solitude and time have caused the anguish and sorrows to pass,
So neither a branch sways nor a root revives.

8. Do not blame me for weeping, for never
Has the oppression of my soul been allotted any shares.

9. Neither the charm of consolation attracted me when they came near,
Nor the sweetness of life appealed when they departed.

10. Dew has harmed us and the star is slumbering,
And the hosts of darkness have no covenant or pact.

11. No sooner had the thread of dawn unraveled
Than the eagle of the sky seemed to have tied it fast.

12. A doe, when the pleasure of consent unsheathes its glance,
Strangely, it sheathes it, vexed.

13. It nods its bridle, and its heart falls silent,
Its ankle bells still, but its ear-rings turbulent.

14. And when she saw vows stirring up calamities
And governing all life tyrannically,

15. She wept in agony, then feared and smiled,
And the water of my eyelids flows bloody over my cheek.

16. My eyelids resemble her eyelids, her waist,
Her radiant smile, the tears and kohl.

17. And her form is like the gazelle’s in slimness
And difficult for her in every long robe.

18. When roused, she is arrows, and moreover
Callous when her unleashing of calamities intensifies.

19. She whines but I do not say like a wanton,
Had she assumed the burden of wantonness, she would not have lasted.

20. We were companions with her by the enchanted soul
From bewilderment until none pined for her, even for a moment.

21. Until we bent her far, exhausted,
Where the ancestors with matted hair and hanging forelocks reside.

22. In the presence of a King whose troops are poverty and wealth,
August is His threshold, in His grasp contraction and release.