1. I freed you from the shackles of love, freed completely,
And the day of separation confused your sane mind,

2. And parting divided you in two, one
With the departing stranger, and the other settled,

3. So your body settled in those dwellings,
While your heart settled in those meadows,

4. You enjoyed the sweetness of youth with pleasure,
Its later stages beloved, and its first steps,

5. Let not blame distract you from love's pleasure,
For blame and rebuke amongst people are ever-present,

6. For Majnoon's love stirred his heart,
Throughout his life until the tombs embraced him,

7. And Imru al-Qais in his love for Hind,
Found solace in interpreting traditions,

8. And Ghaylan never ceased in his love for Mayya,
A captive until Ghaylan perished miserably,

9. By my soul, from the one I bid farewell, her tears
Flowing down her cheeks in torrents,

10. On the morrow when the scent of separation appeared,
It wrestled with my soul openly and stealthily,

11. Complaint deceives me, and between us love
Has avenues, entrances, and exits,

12. Our livers ache from our love, and our hearts
Are pastures in which love grazes and feeds,

13. A married woman made inaccessible in her curtained litter,
Her chastity guarded by virtuous women,

14. Poverty roams over her, above her waist,
Below, her anklets make soft sounds,

15. If she were to wear only the slip while still silent,
You would see it about her waist, hardly hiding,

16. In the wilderness, he walks beside her, his stature
Swaying like a bough of the wild plum,

17. Leave her to the passage of years, four yet
Until her breast shrinks and ten cycles,

18. From me she shoots the arrows of her glances,
When her bright eyes shine radiantly,

19. A jealous kinsman prevents me from meeting her,
As does her virtue which prevents,

20. And strange women who do not answer a questioner,
With the news about her that he asks,

21. She has a waist – though not one of the first! –
Stages not empty, but filled and inhabited,

22. The drops of rainwater quenched her thirst,
While the cloudbursts made her heavy with child,

23. The starry nights clothed her in their gown,
So the meadows shine with flowers,

24. Her plain and hill country become by it
Plentiful, the lowlands and the heights abundant,

25. By it, the farmer rests at leisure, his hands stilled,
A steed whose hoofs when the thirsty crowd jostles

26. Paw the ground, and the racing rivulets rush,
Bestowing on us every morning a streaming,

27. With pawing and the water-drawers following,
By it, the days were adorned in face, and shone

28. In its rule, their first fruits and nobilities,
Love of it flowed through the people until it mingled

29. The veins of their blood, its joints,
And they referred to it their affairs’ problems,

30. Seeing it as their guardian, caretaker,
O sun whose orbit revolves naught but

31. Purities and radiances!
You launched against your enemies a night raid

32. That shook the firm judgments and disputes
Stirring against them, with what angers you,

33. A torrent of valor, molten metal, and rain,
So you inflicted upon them horses’ chests, and for battle,

34. Sources in the steeds' nostrils and watering places,
They fled, while among them the spear tip penetrated,

35. Bewildered, while among them the sword blade split,
You replaced for them the immediate

36. With the deferred, and nothing deferred is far,
They prepared graves for their deaths,

37. But died, and events are naught but consequences,