1. You know I am one whose desire
Is stirred up and roused in me,

2. And whose rhymes are like your beauty -
When it reveals itself, naked and free,

3. And when love rises in me, do not forbid
Whatever passion its eruption may be,

4. Why then do you try and make me proclaim
What the world would disown me for saying?

5. And why do you stir the poet in me
When his feeling was dormant and tame?

6. Do not say I frown and withdraw,
Turning away my face and my tongue,

7. For these are a revolt against fate in me,
Like a steed that disdains the course.

8. In your presence I'm joyous and blithe
As though I were reveling in a tavern,

9. If you knew how I feel when you dance
And your belly quivers, so soft and lush,

10. A quiver that doesn't touch between your legs
Or stir your lovely breasts from their place,

11. With your arms, so pliant, waving about
Tossing in writhing, intoxicate grace,

12. And your breasts, two pomegranates, swaying
Alongside their twin rosy shapes,

13. Your smooth bare back which the eye loves
For its form and exquisite balance,

14. Showing its slenderness, the bone discerned
Beneath, with no trace of fat to enhance,

15. Favored solely by youth's prime living
And given its vigour and verve,

16. Coming amidst the dainty sprites
In play, outpacing its peers,

17. As you sway gently left and right
Like a slender branch in the breeze,

18. When you smile at us your lips part
Sweetly, showing your teeth like pearls,

19. While the watchers are lost in your beauty
And your clothes, even more beguiling,

20. Many a body is covered in fashion
Then adorned as a splendid garden,

21. Hiding some flaw, as if the clothes
Had come to complete what it lacks,

22. If a hand tailored such dress for you
It showed skill most satanic -

23. Revealing you openly to people
To steal away their minds,

24. Drawing your breasts together
While the cleft between them gapes,

25. Hinting at your playful pomegranates
With a rose placed between them,

26. How strange that your lovely limbs
Show plainly while your special part's hidden,

27. That which God preferred over all else you own
And made the jewel of humankind,

28. Wishing it a form that would be
The best of all forms - and so it became,

29. In a fertile place which Allah graced
With aromatic herbs all around,

30. Not wanting its sight to give pleasure
Or for it to be concealed from view,

31. Like a book whose pages are shown
Then covered by force against its grain,

32. Or a freshwater pool, pure and sweet
That's forbidden, while its banks are allowed,

33. A temple of God whose gate is shut
And its pillars veiled from within,

34. Your lush body's a proof to refute
Argument, if you didn't hide its evidence,

35. I've seen both of yours together - ah, the love
Of girls! O temptress, profaner!

36. A glimpse I was denied, and with others
It's cheapened, taken lightly,

37. When it clung to your belt, my soul craved
To clasp you, but could not get near,

38. And she bent her hand to the seat of passion
From me, and stroked over its terrain,

39. With her, you "sold" frivolity and zeal,
And with me, "forbidden" modesty and composure,

40. If her coming to you is allowed, I'd come
As a man you'd not permit to enter;

41. Would you have me say, to one who doesn't know
The extent of what's between you,

42. The girls of desire have enjoyed pleasures
Not allowed them by the boys?

43. Brides in one place, grooms in another -
Each left to do as they please.