1. Perhaps an apparition of you visits my bed
And if it strays, my moaning will guide it to my place

2. Bestow it upon me and send it in the year of separation
And after that do with it what you wish

3. And if it returns, ask it to answer you with what it sees
Perhaps you will console yourself or perhaps you will be content

4. Otherwise, grant me the easiest attainment
That I may complain to you of my love and you hear

5. I knew love to be sweet and bitter in taste
And none is more truthful in his love than the pretender

6. So I have not tasted anything sweeter than beholding the beloved
Nor greater than the affectionate one bidding farewell

7. And I could not forget, when I embraced her to bid adieu
The essence of my tears mingled with the pearls of my necklace

8. She wipes with her right hand the tears of her eyelids
And places her left upon a frightened heart

9. And she said my tears, my yearning and my sighs
Are witnesses to my love for you that I profess

10. If you are absent, all joy departs from me
And I have no life if you are not with me

11. And when she left and the night had passed
The light of dawn hurried her

12. And she could not return the greeting in her fear
She gestured with a glance then winked with a finger

13. So what patience has its knots not unbound
And what heart thereafter has not cracked

14. May God guard those who keep their word to the beloved
You will not see them turn away from their passion

15. No tear that does not obey the one who calls it
And how different between a disobedient and an obedient tear

16. My dear ones, do not think that I
Have forgotten, absence kindled the fires in my ribs

17. Upon you is God's peace for as long as the morning blows
And for as long as lightning flashes in rumbling clouds