1. Alas! Does my affliction from your separation have a cure?
It is poison, but in seeing you is the antidote.

2. O sun of excellence that has set, though its light
Illuminates every region in the east with radiance.

3. The covenant has made a covenant that its covenant
Has given my heart an enduring covenant and pact.

4. It is renewed by a memory as fragrant
As the leaf of a grape vine that was once green.

5. You have sublime, noble manners and character
And most of the manners of mankind are your manners.

6. Truly, O father of connection, since you left
Your lands for my lands, worries and passions have attacked me.

7. When her snuffing has saddened me with my tears
They flowed, and burned between my eyelids.

8. Clouds that sighs propel through
The horizons and cloud banks with gasps.

9. And I had a treasure of vast patience,
From it in dire straits I spent.

10. A sword which if I unsheathed some of its blade
For an army of calamities, it exhausted them.

11. Until separation made clear that its blade
Was delusion, and the treasure was poverty and need.

12. My brother, my master, my patron, a call from someone pure
And he has no release save through your affection.

13. If the ardors of passion have distanced what is between us
With a persistent rain-laden cloud fluttering about,

14. And a hand, if burdens weary it
The raising of its forearms is curtailed and fettered.

15. For me is an affection for you that always remains
As necklaces remain round the necks of doves.

16. Alas! Do my days with you have a return
To my covenant, while the mouth smiles radiant?

17. Nights that bring us close together again
Like two ivory statues joined at the hip.

18. And what is between us of your pleasant words is a meadow
That listening ears have envied.

19. A conversation, a conversation - the more concise, the more
Beneficial to the heart of the eager conversant.

20. It carries him away, a sea of your knowledge, abundant,
With every sea of its overflowing fullness gurgling.

21. Meanings like the peaks of lofty mountains made
Of gentle, sweetly-flowing speech containing wisdom.

22. In it is wisdom and wondrous, strange insights
For which philosophers passionately yearn.

23. If Aristotle lived he would be passionate for them
And have a heart constantly desiring more.

24. O unique in excellence, who is sustained by knowledge
And its people are thirsty and desirous!

25. If my writings are inadequate, it is no wonder,
Due to reasons beyond my capacity and overwhelming circumstances.

26. I wrote while the tribulations of the seas cast them back,
And if there is no return to me, then sinking.

27.
Seas that locks and keys are the winds’ judgments upon them,

28. And upon their doors both opening and closing.
Who can grant me to gain from you an affectionate glance