1. I must not sleep or rest
And reproach and blame will not avail

2. If I were to sew my eyelids to wakefulness
Perhaps I’d find with her some time alone

3. Today I wished to see her in a dream
While others wish for what is past and gone

4. By God I’d not before been satisfied
With what would satisfy one whose love lives on

5. Fate judges in a time we find unjust
Calling it tyranny, though elsewhere justice

6. I wept, and one like me deserves no blame
For weeping o’er days that will come no more

7. And for a lover who exceeded all bounds
No letters now reach me, no envoys call

8. For one like Layla a man may take his life
Though many with lesser love refrain from death

9. Alas her brief life and swift departure
How soon companionship was torn apart!

10. My friend, I remember days we swore
Thanks to her virtue, none reproached her deeds

11. A darling of all, torn by fate from me
The rope slipped through my hands and broke in two

12. How wondrous is our separation! Was there
No other in the world whose time it took?

13. Friends, how lonesome the earth since you left!
The roads grew narrow for want of travelers

14. You went away, and made cheap my endurance,
My patience, my tears too costly to shed

15. To God I complain, if He willed we'd be together
As we were before in those days long ago

16. I traveled to forget your love with strangers
But other lips, not yours, can only bitter water bestow

17. I bid goodbye to a lover before my eyes
After him, where can I find heart's ease?

18. I’ve precedent in those who died of passion
No shame or disgrace in their fate I see

19. Pitiful, lovers spilling their own blood
No weregild or vengeance for it can there be

20. As blood shed in vain by a heedless king
Who afterward felt no regret, no pity