1. I confide my love to you, O dove, and entrust
For you are, among birds, a place for secrets

2. And you are a helper to lovers in passion
You coo, so we listen, or you moan, and we hear

3. I see you coming from Yemen, while Egypt is my desire
We are both strangers, displaced from home and hurt

4. Both weak in exile, yet safe
And crying for the nearness of home

5. Of the wonders is that I weep and complain
While you sing in the branches rhyming

6. Perhaps you hide tenderness or conceal passion
So the eyes may hold back while the heart weeps

7. Your small nests, like little cups, and a homeland
Young, like the days of youth, flourishing

8. If there is length and space in destinies
Separation is but an expected accident

9. And family and loved ones are but pearls
Scattered by days and collected by fate

10. Is not my heart evidence to you, my witness?
So do not deny him, for he is deposited with you

11. Your captive, if ransomed, would pay it with all
His limbs yearning for you and my ribs

12. Fate has cast him to you in the halo of passion
Debased on the slope of disgrace and laid down

13. And of wonder he grieves when I say "wearied"
And trembles if I say "the forbidden captive"

14. You have found one knowing of love songs, though
The heart is like man, tempted and deceived

15. And I know that deceit is common among people
And the companion of singers is lost

16. And that the conflict of sanity and madness is a state
That comes with men's dreams and returns

17. And that the desires of souls are deadly
And their multitude, from the multitude of flowers, withers

18. And that the advocates of good and truth, their war
Is with a time burning for them since Socrates