1. Greetings caress your air and their fragrance reaches you,
And praise spreads with a scent that chooses you.

2. Supplication still upheld carries you
On the shoulder of the auspicious north wind prospering you.

3. My loved ones - a person may call
A far-off brother when his grievance overwhelms him.

4. Has time brought me nearer to you? For I am cold
With yearning whose ardor kindles the heart it envelops.

5. And tears that freeze whenever the promptings
Of your love make my eyelids flow with weeping.

6. Enough of sorrow that I am alone in Shiraz
Waking early, saddened by desolation, spending my day.

7. And bearing worries that, were they to alight enfeebled,
Would wither and the calamities looming over them would rise high.

8. And a longing - if its years grew old to the companion of gloom -
Its glow would suffice him, needing no lamps' light.

9. And eyes that show me their lids convulsing
With pain that strips endurance bare and lays it open.

10. The morrow came, and it is the title page of events,
Before it the hidden and the manifest tribulations.

11. And there are things too narrow for verse, some of them
Taking refuge in the shade of reticence that reveals them.

12. I grieve, and meet none but the dawn's caller
Casting my troubles and I hurl them away.

13. It cuts the hours of daylight with its wailing
Until it sees the face of darkness greeting it.

14. And it has, after stillness, a bout
And another - the most woeful of crying when its mourner is not restrained.

15. It complained of my loneliness - a lament and remoteness - so
Its leaves sobbed at what makes its feathers tremble.

16. When it flaps its wings but they fail it
Its trilling comes near to making its sides bleed.

17. Except that it has a companion, so if it calls
Its companions answer from nearby places.

18. While when I miss you, between you and me are impediments -
The howling wilderness and the roaring torrents.

19. And the waves crashing with what the wind's hand toyed with
But the star surmounted the foam overwhelming it.

20. Though in prison, its life is most comfortable,
And the near and the remote dweller are not equal.

21. Absence raids me with its tyranny
And from every atmosphere its cries call me.

22. It is dominant - so let it sheathe its weapons, leaving
Me when I have no troops to fight it.

23. Nor can the lone afflicted man brandish his spear
With a stab, or make his blades gleam with striking.

24. The rain quenched the thirst of Hafsa's grave, and if the sky
Refused rain, her tears would have sufficed, pouring down.

25. The fluttering breeze, when it blows
Gently fans its air night and day.

26. A land where my heart stayed and did not
Stop, though you aspired bodily to leave it.

27. Will God race to bring me back
To it - showing me tears that have gushed like tattoo marks?

28. And will this distance be humbled, subdued,
And what prevented its ardour be tamed?