1. My tears flooded the slopes at nightfall,
No wonder the miserly weeps for the generous.

2. My night grew long while my eyelids remained short,
So the horizon did not adorn its mouth with the dawn's smile.

3. May God grant me respite
To a displaced man who has wasted his tears in displacement.

4. The heart grieves in silent sorrow,
Its speech through my cheeks and dress multiplied it.

5. O abode whose beauties have been forbidden,
No banners flutter for you, neither date palms nor acacias.

6. I have not seen fire in my soul
That when doused with water became more inflamed.

7. Refrain from my advice in Salim for I
Have seen the eye of ignorance in the rising of advice.

8. Love is nothing but a market of passion and anguish,
Through it I calculated the losing deals of my heart’s profit.

9. By her bloody cheeks—from which nothing has been gained—
How strange! My heart alone was wounded.

10. Blaming me since I was unharmed by her glance,
Unharmed by sorrows or wounds that scrape.

11. His unjust rebuke passes my hearing
Like the deaf hearing whispering wind.

12. If not for love my youth would not have remembered my innards
Nor would my eyelid’s laughter weep from a wink.

13. My eyes' kohl would not become the page for tears,
Its applicator fashioning tears through friction.

14. Neither shedding tears nor complaining, my mouth
Nor fancying, my fervor; nor nursing, my wounds.

15. The night came and the stars appeared as if
They were white gazelles peering out from their resting place,

16. With a turn and bend that exposed the branch’s inclination
And a face and twig that shamed the moon in its orbit.

17. The moon escorted them illuminated
Like the noble rising of Othman Abu al Fatah.