1. I asked my eyes to shed for you tears flowing
And I inscribed on my sides a burning passion

2. My dear ones, why have you turned away from me?
If you are not to be my friends, then show mercy

3. Let your eyes, whose tears gush forth, weep for me
And a heart, once you have wounded it, burns intensely

4. Naught have I seen but my beloved's rosy lips
Rosy, or else lightning flashing from his radiant face

5. And a passion like the Pleiades flickering in the dark,
That burns when love is kindled and flares up

6. Who can convey to the roving gazelles
A lover in the meadows of Semaan wandering distraught?

7. O, would that the land of Semaan might thunder
With rain to water the soil where my love deserted me

8. I would build over the Semaan desert a bridge
High enough for me to roam its expanse confused

9. You would see me seizing its reins
Like a new moon disappearing at month's end

10. When the caravan moves by night
It stirs the slumbering caravan at dawn

11. Had I not steadied it with my hands continually
My burning entrails would have tossed me about gently

12. Indeed, my dark-lipped mouth, when it smiles
I fancied lightning flashed from it dazzlingly

13. And reddened roses blooming in my cheeks
Which the morning breeze had opened and burst free

14. And black eyelids dripping wine, when they winked
I drank from them the sparkling unmixed wine

15. I sought refuge in God's name when she turned them,
A magic bearing no antidote in charms

16. Rather, give me the overflowing cup on the polo field
Sweetening my draft whether dawn or dusk

17. I rose and gave a toast from my mouth as though
I rose and applauded the brimming cup

18. I drank the old and new vintage pure
And the most delicious I found was the mature refined

19. O father, I ransom you with my mother and family
A gazelle grazed the sand, lost and confused

20. He is the full moon at its zenith, only
He rose in the land of Semaan radiantly

21. He is the beautiful image which, had it occurred
To David in his shrine, would have made him lovesick

22. He is the musk, fragrant, and the morning, rosily
And meadow flowers, fresh, redolent exquisitely

23. If fate has parted us, our reunion
Will be only so fate can divide us again

24. O brother mine, estrangement has been prolonged
Did you neglect me, or was Semaan unapproachable?

25. Had I not staunched it steadily with my palm
The torrent of lovers' tears would have overwhelmed me

26. It was as though the torrent of tears in its course
Were horses racing across the desert outpacing me

27. As though the floating eyes with their tears
Were boats about to sail away and sink

28. As though the aspiring glances were breasts
The breasts of birds in flight wheeling on high

29. If one day I take a saving course
I will find the path of affliction barred

30. When the breath of morn diffuses its fragrance
I split open my collar and shirt perfumed

31. I see him residing in my heart though remote
He traveled far abroad in the land and shone radiantly

32. Below his waist a striped Yemeni robe flutters
Noble, and a waist slender and tightly wrapped