1. My quiet, faraway place
Be a refuge for me from people

2. You who the fleeing outcast took as a mother
So shelter him, you and the darkness

3. Oh, how beautiful is the hour of parting
In it neither distress nor sorrow

4. Oh, time of illusion and imagination
If only you would last forever

5. O, my final world
What fate do I see in you?

6. In you is rest for the conscience
Or in you an appointment with a beloved

7. How death would torment if we could see it
Or if meeting you could be hoped for

8. It would shake off its dislike
And kiss the sleeping buried form

9. But doubts about what you hide
Have settled above all minds alike

10. I wonder how man moans so much
Yet finds life pleasant pasture

11. Love of life has become agreeing
To be satisfied with carrion for wild beasts

12. And the tolerant to be stingy with us
To establish cowardice in natures

13. Silence and stillness have lasted long with us
The moon speaks not, nor the pond

14. O world of injustice and shackles
You have relieved the captive bird

15. I fled from a world that harmed me
And came, my Kaba, to visit you

16. Give me imagination and poetry then
That I may pour into the mouth of time

17. I fled the world of misery
And came hoping you would revive me

18. To drink from the sublimity of the sky
Poetry, and give life and passion to my heart

19. I wearied in these worlds
Of the farce of death and life

20. And the image of bondage in strongholds
And the brand of humiliation on foreheads

21. Frames passing through the years
One in life and system

22. One in discontent and moaning
One in hatred and discord

23. And the same veneer
That hides the shame of natures

24. Time erodes the faces of hypocrisy
Yet that mask does not melt away

25. With the same eyes shedding false tears
With the same smile of deception

26. And the bending of the same ribs
Over hunters among whom are the hungry

27. As if the breast of darkness tightened
From the abundance of woes every moment

28. Oh woe, how could it bear
The complaint of wildernesses over the years?

29. As if meteors breathe out
To alleviate an anguish that makes them moan

30. Like a heart when constricted and saddened
Memories relieve it

31. How many sighs in ribs have settled
Surrounded by a sickly frame

32. Deadened wherever they stayed
And if it whimpered it was called delusional

33. How many in the darkness prolonged sighs
That reach his ear and consciousness

34. If only the star could understand our talk
Or the night understand what we confide

35. What is with the eyes of the cosmos
Scattered across space

36. Looking out from deep darkness
Without comprehension or intelligence

37. Lo! A supporter in their blindness without dawn
And whenever my moan grows

38. The winds mock me
We have complained endlessly

39. What fortune for a complainer without a listener?
What fortune for poetry when it obeys?

40. Would that it lived not to obey!
It is lost in the abyss of time

41. Scattering its echo in the land
And you will not see in existence one

42. Who knows the torment of what followed it
O river, I envy

43. Every passerby on you
Each traveler as he wishes

44. Quenches his thirst and sips
And from a lover to a lover

45. You lean affectionately and smile
And each one who passes gets a share

46. Of your cool refreshing water
O river, you water every thirsty one

47. Who if he tastes goes quenched
So be kind to my thirst

48. For my mouth has come to burn
O river, I have an ember next to me

49. With gently glowing coals by day
So when night draws near, it flares up in me

50. And how the stillness of night stirs it!
I stood ablaze before you

51. Do you see a felicitous one from you?
I wish to throw it into your waters

52. Perhaps in you it would cool
A cure for its flames, so if it calms

53. A mercy from you without limit
And if its fire rebels, just be

54. For it a grave at the end of time
You show me the distant lost wanderer

55. Yet being near is not in my thoughts
Whenever you leave me, I forget

56. His apparition passing before me
Memory after memory passes

57. And with each memory there are tears
And the calamities follow each other

58. From every irretrievable past
A past with so much disgrace in it

59. And torment that is over
How often I said do not lift the veil

60. Nor remember what has passed
O you I now see before my eyes

61. Whose image perfumes the breeze
I swear what you seek of me

62. You left me nothing but pain
I swear you have not wasted

63. Any heart that became nothingness
We have not rewarded you for what you did

64. We forgave those who did wrong
Think not the innocent are pained

65. Our wound is still fresh
It deceives us that it has healed

66. While it still hides the festering
O night, I came to weep

67. And I came to console and forget
Prolonged is my torment and prolonged my complaint

68. And my heart died and did not console