1. Gather the people, O Layla, to a listening assembly,
And be the cheerful entertainer.

2. You invited them to virtue, so they came willingly,
With pure, content souls.

3. Words of thanks, were I to give them, would not suffice
For some of what you have brought.

4. Alas for the stricken ones whose homes
A calamitous aggressor has burned!

5. Their orphans and infants wander around,
And their women are expelled, crying.

6. They have spent the night, and after shelter nothing remains
Except caves in the overwhelming gloom.

7. Caves lit up fiercely
By the glare of that raging flame,

8. Whose edges drip embers—you would reckon them
By it to be bloody.

9. Who will return the old man to his home,
To his corner cell from the hermitage?

10. Who will help the old and the dependent members
Of his household that he supports?

11. Who is there for the bride who left her bower
And after her jewelry stands bare?

12. You saw, O Layla, with the eye of discretion
The horrors of that annihilating calamity.

13. So pity moved the strings
Of your melodious, untroubled soul.

14. And my songs are but an echo
Of that sublime quality of yours.

15. Layla, sit sovereign upon the dais
Over the hearts of the devoted company

16. In a garden created for an auspicious hour
Whose flowers are in bloom.

17. Under an abundant, luminous sky
With a thousand lamps in it burning bright.

18. Layla, produce from the treasuries of intimacy
The treasures of that hidden melody,

19. And let the people remember a love now gone,
And let the forgetful lover remember.

20. And let the emaciated one waste away, and let him who weeps
Weep for his own complaining soul.

21. For in the fruits of passion there lies for them
Good for those suffering souls.

22. Say to them, “O night of anguish, exalt for it
The witnesses of that harsh night!”

23. It is as though I look from wherever
You have sent those precious pearls,

24. At a wafting of mercy upon
The fires of those lofty pillars.