1. What ails you two, struck down
By fever and plague, do you not stop?

2. What ails you two, clothed
In tarred gowns dripping wet?

3. Woe is me for Afra’a, woe like
A blade cutting my throat and guts!

4. Would that the trystplace of Afra'a's love
Were bliss - but no, where they meet is cursed.

5. Truly, people of God, I visit
Ufayra not unless al-Walid sees me there

6. As though she and I by promise stand
So that I almost burnt her affair and she mine.

7. If the most passionate of men and his like
Of jinn and men were to meet

8. To complain of passion, then I would complain
Of a passion feebler than what they feel.

9. Afra’ left no weeping speculum-dove
Whose throat-apple in Dumat al-Jandal has not echoed,

10. She left me not knowing what to say
To a confidant, even were I to confide and he to answer me,

11. She left my heart as if it were
The wing of a raven forever fluttering.