1. I love the fever and yearning for his family
Though time has prevented me from them with its affliction

2. And my breath sighs for the words of a longing lover
For his family, at the time of departure and its shadow

3. No thread of my tears was ever loosened
At the old ruins, not even by a thread of clouds in dissolution

4. And if the palms of the dwellings have decayed from life
I bestowed its melodies with song before ruin and decay

5. And a pond’s face I left out of aversion
Exceeding violets in sheen and surface

6. And the mouth of a loved one I kissed, Sabha adorned its prose
My tears' droplets speckled it along with its saliva

7. How many gentle in ignorance at its courtyards cried for me
With tears of compassion and ignorance

8. And it brought him sympathy for me and softness
For the loss of my reckless, blameworthy heart

9. I cry the time of youth but I did not cry
The time of youth even if time was equal to it

10. And they said, “Ask some of the night companions about the fever”
They have lied, and it preoccupies me completely

11. I have been tested by the stature of Samhra and his deeds
And terrified by his manner and gaze

12. I used to have patience in fever
So who led him until he cursed me in its place?

13. When he frowned his eyebrows in a frown
I was certain arrogance was the like of his nobility

14. Leave my eyelids to love him and their sleeplessness
And leave what is between my heart and its equal to him

15. Whoever spends the night still denies the motions of longing
And wakes in the morning humbled and sent

16. So woe to the ugliness of old age and estrangement
Alas for the beauty of youth and union

17. How often I went with fluttering breast and gut
For Zainab of beauty and perfect stature

18. I compare youthfully with its branches
And liken appropriately to its sand dunes

19. Is there an intimate preserving its secret like it
Insightful into professing passion and conveying it?

20. I carry her short of parting, a howdah
Lighter than the litter's saddle and pack-saddle

21. Yearning for Egypt and the bridge of its throne
And longing for the water of Sidir and its groves

22. Love whose steeds' arms grew short and driving
And whose camel-litters narrowed, barely containing it

23. In every house I have a beloved bidding farewell
I taste against my will the bitterness of bereavement

24. No harm in traveling slowly if only walking
At ease, not hastened into demise at ease

25. So it tore apart the union of parting, ruling
How it cleaved with yearning the cleavage of its union!