1. If you knew when I asked about you, my friend
I would have replied, "O friend of the beloved, my answer is..."

2. You wasted your youth with calamities descending
As I, too, wasted my youth

3. I yearn for the days of my and your youth
When love united us, O lovers

4. When time did not threaten me with separation
Nor did the beloved accept my agony

5. Strolling to the meadows
Or opening the tendrils of vines

6. With cheeks as fruit when I wish
And with mouths as drink when I want

7. Why have they shunned me when I thought they were loyal
Do they perish while time’s expanse remains?

8. I reproach them for the wrong they have done
If only my reproach inclined them toward me

9. I surrendered to the thorns a serene heart
That I used to protect from thorns

10. And I left my body to the whims an easy prey
Shot through by the arrows of eyelids

11. Marvel not that love conquers inhibition
For love conquers all inhibition

12. Dimples once led me astray
Yet they were but the snares of intellect

13. Flowing over abandoned mantles
Flowing lost in rapture

14. And many a night I have spent in its coverings
Regretting convivial cups

15. I complain to them of my afflictions, so they increase them
And for each one there is something of me

16. I have torn passion from my core
And left my intrepidity in the shackles of beauty

17. And I emerged to the days unleashing it
Vanquishing them by might from harming me