1. My beloved says, while the riding camel is submissive
Between us, among the uprooted tamarisk and the anxious one

2. Is there in ruins a stronger and more melodious encampment
Than a cloak, with ornamented edges, starry?

3. The spirits have injured it every evening
And every roar of thunder with rain is a plaster upon it

4. You shaded, protecting the eye lest its west poured down
With a slope from the summit of Sakhkham, made even

5. And from the voice of the female oryxes, it warbled
Crying over a branch from the lost one, brown

6. It reminds you of the life that does not return
And an era that has passed—would that it did not chant!

7. So I said to him, “What stirs this passion
If not stirred by it—and the heart is deprived?

8. The dove of Ayk—her early morning doves reply to her
From the highest peak made even

9. And the melody of a beloved—his memory aimed at the heart
So in the heart is from him a wound not yet healed

10. When I say, ‘It has faded, its illness has gone’
Desire for Layla denies it, so it does not flow from blood

11. We came to her abode and love took residence in the bosom
Settled between the heart and the one who smiles

12. You were reasonable, so leave me to my state and pardon me
From blame in my night and secret, so conceal it!

13. I commanded my heart, after the fetters of my night
Clung to it, struggling to resign itself

14. And I said to it—and rectitude, its path is easy
For its pillar is sorrow, if it is not perfected

15. O heart! Do not overexert, for Layla’s pilgrimage site
Is far, and Layla is married to another, not steadfast

16. Plucking fruits of error, even if eternity wanders,
Except for a glow of embers it kindled, are not continual

17. And if it rises after sitting, with effort it does not stand
Save after long enduring hardship

18. It writhes with the highest behind it, so it obeys it
And refuses to straighten in rights, the well-worn cheat

19. She distracted me the morning of the sacrifice with one
Whose cheeks’ edges were not worn out

20. With a nose like the edge of a sword—accurate, and an eyebrow
And a chest that covered the forelegs and wrist

21. It reminds me while imprisonment is my abode, and perhaps
Al-Hijazi will stir the memory of the blamed one

22. I spend my day in passion for her as if I
Were in the darkness of night, deep dark