1. If a branch blooms like a youth
In whom I shed my chastity,

2. A wavering, singing drunkard,
Sweetly tender, a Turk,

3. My efforts toward him and pleading
Yet through him my devotion's lost.

4. His chastity's my lilac,
His mole is musky to me,

5. His spittle's my wine, his illness
Is enamored with death.

6. By cruelty am I consumed,
His cheek an inferno to me.

7. I complain unto his breast a blaze
Whose sparks are from my tears,

8. And I see a wondrous separation
Whose occurrence was despite union.

9. O ye who migrated without cause!
Can there be a return from this farewell?

10. Kill me and fear no revenge;
By my love, do not hesitate.

11. For my people are more compassionate
Should they seek you in vengeance for my death.

12. My heart yielded to the branch—it would not
Obey the reproacher.

13. Nor assists me in passion
Save the vile deceiver,

14. And I've no consolation
Save praise for God's bounty.

15. The freedman of my slavery from ardor
In Whom discourse has faded.

16. To Whom belong might when He granted
Deliverance, and praise that's my trait,

17. A Lord Whose ancestor is Sublime
In lineage and fortune—

18. A sea with brilliant pearls
I saw, endowed with speech,

19. In merit He pays no heed
To a preacher's censure.

20. Glory's protector of mankind
By glance and eminence

21. Confirmed in merit, no blemish
Cleaves to His loftiness.

22. And a maid said, “A brown man took
My reason by love.”

23. “O neighbor, by the Prophet why
Ask you not of my tidings?

24. I clung to a branch that passed me by
Whose chastity is fleeing.

25. I spurned my man and father
For this lovely moon.”

26. “Why discard the Sheikh and love
A tender, green, fresh bough?”