1. You have replaced the fragrance of roses with affliction,
And your radiant mornings with tribulation.

2. You journeyed between the bellies of roaring bulls
To barren wildernesses, nothing but rugged terrain.

3. So turn away from one who practices deceit,
A coarse lout who guzzles wine in secret haunts.

4. For tomorrow holds for you a brilliant dawn
With dovelike rain, not like other rains,

5. Chosen by the Lord of the Holy House, and placed
In the bosom of sacred Meethea as a gift.

6. The Euphrates flowed over it in its streams,
And clouds in the morn anointed it with showers.

7. So the rain washed away what summer had despoiled
And it took on a renewed radiance after fading.

8. It began to bloom like melodious calls to prayer
Its clusters like beads - what an adornment!

9. Until, when the Abyssinians combed it, swaying,
The bunches were ready, green sheaths enfolding.

10. To it came a disheveled, dusty tribe
Reaping the contrasts of sand and stony ground.

11. They stripped the grapes your eye delights to see
Until the yield flowed in the hollow winepress.

12. And the gentle juice was extracted, drop by drop,
By slaves moving slowly, with calm restraint,

13. To a land founded on battlegrounds
Between al-Aqabah, Ibrad, and ar-Ramthah.

14. Until, when the tattoo showed its pattern
Of drops, and the vat echoed with songs,

15. It was shielded from the sun in a sturdy shelter
By a Jewess, daughter of the wind at noon.

16. Still heedless of it, like one who scorns it,
The spring of youth, no differently than women,

17. Seeks others when it is clarified by skimming,
Expanding it, though it hurts and mocks it.

18. Sometimes he sells it, but prevents
Its enrichment, lest one day it make him rich.

19. Until when time outlives its progeny
And twists their life's threads - how they're devastated!

20. From events come shards that make idols weep,
And sages of Taima' convulse in grief.

21. He died, his heart enthralled with its allure,
His burning passion unhealed by remedies.

22. When it was offered for drinking and he clung to life
At dawn, with pure, cup-bearing hands,

23. It unlocked its seals in eulogizing her
With a shiver, like a blinking fawn's eye.

24. Nothing remained of her but his imagining
So the thing, when examined, was empty as an illusion.

25. The soul intermingled in its inmost circles
As lights blend with each other in their glow.

26. The senses cannot perceive it when it releases
Anything but a breath, or a twinge in the entrails.

27. The soul's delight inclines toward its scent;
Thus came the accounts of Ibn Dihyah.

28. The temper surged in dance and joyous rapture
Until turmoil churned in its depths like leaping does.

29. It tells of her wearing a golden necklace,
A circlet hovering over jet-black ringlets.

30. Then a pearl formed into her crown
Until a throne rose above the water for her,

31. A throne with no mud, above which is foam
Transcending any quality of ruby's glow.

32. No brilliant star's light can look upon it
Until glassy moments return to it.

33. As if the temper's narrative were a garment
Embroidered over the back of a gazelle.

34. Nothing is lovelier than she in her actions,
Like the gestures of a hand both graceful and beckoning,

35. When she passes you by night, freely,
Trailing long tresses and flirtatious glances.

36. She who indelibly tattooed me, without modesty,
With the mark of the debauched - she named me with names.

37. I do not indulge in her without restraint,
Just endless delight in every misfortune.

38. How sweet life would be but for the memory of one
From whom we lovers are parted!

39. This is bliss, and without it life holds no
Hind temptress, after Asma.