1. The death of the noble is life in their dwellings
If they are exiled, they die though they live

2. O people of my love! No, by Allah, my pacts have not been severed
I have covenants and affections have not narrowed

3. If you are far, though the sea lies between us
Our souls meet in dreams, in nightly visitations

4. I sleep not, but to meet your image
Where can sleep be for the expatriate in strange lands?

5. When we are ill, it is thoughts of you that make us ill
Were an illness to recover, it would relapse again

6. What use sending greetings on the wind?
Greetings are best conveyed in person

7. In my exile, if I did not restrain my tears
Earth and sky would weep for me

8. As if I'd never tasted fruit in al-Qayrawan
Or called to friends “Come!” or “Here!”

9. As if cheeks flushed red in Jaquq
And the doe-eyed beauties of Babel never pierced me

10. After our bright days of old
Do dawns and dusks delight me?

11. I pass the sea at ease, to lands
Where my soul dies, needing things found only there

12. I ask ships for news, hoping
I curve in pain, my entrails twisted

13. Is there no letter of love on which I might lean
And cure my sickness, for letters can heal the sick

14. May God water the land of al-Qayrawan with life
As if with my streaming tears

15. For it is a slice of Eden, its soil
Musk-scented, its pebbles like gems

16. Unless it holds a garden grove
For lovers’ trysts are in gardens

17. Unless a sweet stream flows through it
For its rivers are generous hands

18. A gentle land, of blessed regions
With God's proofs and signs upon it

19. Let not the foe gloat should it be shamed
For the eclipse too has its time upon the sun

20. The Installer and Remover of all things
Annuls and affirms as He wills

21. Can we hope al-Qayrawan will be ours again?
With Sbibra and M'lili and Hunayn?

22. No sooner does night fall than my longing grows
My sighs turn to moans in its dark

23. I cannot breathe the dawn air in gardens
But my suppressed anguish rises

24. This, though the lute never stirred my heart to song
Nor the pipes of Labana soothed it

25. How often called to a garden, it renews my pain
Though it offers joy, when joy is torment

26. Could you but see me when its nightingales sing
I complain to the nightingales - if complaining helped

27. Lo! I thirst, though rivers run around me
And I sacrifice, with suns circling below

28. I see only death extending its hand
To free the prisoner before escape is possible