1. A heart spacious with yearning yet vaster,
Dreams grant while waking denies;

2. A forlorn nightingale—perhaps she
Went after my heart, bidding adieu.

3. O you who left, to whom our hearts migrated
And I think not to return, obsessed with longing.

4. Why do I see the abode you left
Inhabited, as if a ruin patched anew?

5. Separation, the disjoiner, split our company—
Company’s a single noun that cannot be made plural.

6. My tongue was my heart’s messenger but doubled back—
My heart, from sending tongue, grew ever more shy.

7. How brief was the time you spent among us,
Like a dream the waking eye beholds, then sleeps.

8. Thus time passes, bringing us its different days—
The worst in it is wasted, the joy forlorn.

9. I’d not be pleased by life, nothing but illnesses,
Yet diverting them cannot be denied.

10. If there were no terrors between souls,
Then the strangeness of estrangement terrifies souls.

11. How neglect made man forget his trusted friends
And poured his poison to those who deceive!

12. He keeps watch over faint stars in the sky
While the soul, closer to him, he fails to see.

13. The doctor busied healing others
Forgetting his own heart, suffering, diseased.

14. Knowledge benefits souls so if it lacks
Any use, ignorance would be more useful.

15. By my father, for whom ribs bent after he left,
And, missing him, grew straight with sadness.

16. You're far above any fool's suspicions
And the attributes of those ruled by caprice.

17. O you who lodged my orphaned heart—it is
A home, designed with love for you, embellished.

18. How often have I recited, for your sake, verses
Whose meters, like my longing, tatter and tear.

19. My soul is spare, stripped of all but you
Perhaps in love this raises one above.

20. If being close is denied between us
I love most what, between us, is denied.