1. Neither have the folk brought tidings, nor have they come,
Nor has your heart news about your nights.

2. Spring abandoned our nights and left them,
And the meadow was deserted – no shade, no water.

3. O you who cure maladies, malady has destroyed me,
Is there no slaking this raging, murderous thirst?

4. No rest for the heart’s bird, no haven
For an anxious, frightened caravan in the river.

5. I have a winter sky that does not rain,
Dark in the ribs of my soul, barren.

6. Tempestuous a while, silent another,
Yet my fancy is not fooled when she is silent.

7. So how often has the night been tranquil but for a restless murmur,
As if it were a breath in the dark, a patrol.

8. Was it you who called, or a voice I imagined?
So to you my hearing strains, attentive.

9. I am here, if only my soul had wings to fly to you,
How can one wasted by love rise up?

10. Why should I rise and exert myself when these are but semblances,
Not solid, mere clothes and images?

11. An empty show of meaning and names
Since you gave notice of this separation, names.

12. O night, every day is dead, so when
You call, it rises as at the resurrection.

13. No day in your precincts passes away,
Never will a morn or eve make it forgotten.

14. Two met, and their meeting was sweet –
A sick youth and a lovely girl.

15. Her beauty was repentance for the world and her chastity
Expiation for the sins of time, pure white.

16. Her hair was black – its ringlets cascading,
Glistening with beauty though raven dark.

17. A tress nodded in sleep and others freely flowed
Temptingly behind the night for her and ivory.

18. The sun of that day blazed and flamed
As if a bonfire on the horizon, red.

19. People scattered about the shore and gathered,
Raised a great din and hubbub for themselves.

20. While others, lazy, in their places,
As if they were rocks on the shore, hard.

21. They stripped off the fetters of life and broke loose,
No longer captives, no longer sleepless prisoners.

22. Time on that day cast off its laws
And decrees, so they had of it what they wished.

23. Before the corruption of the age they were
The world's core, before hatred challenged love, foes.

24. They were not created with flaws in themselves,
Rather, the sickness of this world is the sickness.

25. Some souls narrowed with hatred – and had they been safe
They would have been like the sky's expanse, open.

26. I have no need of them. For me you are the whole world
And more – you suffice my heart and enrich it.

27. If I had forever, it would not exceed a year,
And the dream's span with eyes closed in sleep.

28. I look to you, and a fear comes over me,
And I avert my gaze for I cannot bear to look.

29. When I speak, speech does not profit me,
Yet if I am silent, silence too reveals.

30. My heart loved you with a love whose secret I have not betrayed
Nor can conceal, beyond my power.

31. Whatever notion occurs, the wind conveys it
And the shore echoes it, and the horizon, echoes.

32. O night, who taught the birds our tale,
How does the morning breeze know we are lovers?

33. When we awoke we saw the sun declining
To farewell, with no reprieve for separation.

34. Her braids greyed and her tresses unravelled,
Ash-blonde at the hour of parting, yellow.

35. An abiding dusk escorted her and dyed her,
As if it were henna on the train of her hair.

36. O you who breathed the heat of passion on my neck,
As the hot vapour breathes in the wine flasks.

37. And I breathed the heat of passion in his mouth,
Yet am not sated, though this stream flows ever.

38. You are not far from my thoughts, however distant,
Nor will darkness conceal you from my eyes.