1. What harm if the people of passion returned?
They left, so the meadows and hills are deserted.

2. With their leaving, the age of youth was revealed
in the traces of their remoteness. Who shall I weep for and call upon?

3. My loved ones, think not that I am led
To a people other than you, so I ask you and follow.

4. My purpose is to reform what is between me and you,
And everything of this world has consequences.

5. After you I stood in the spring lamenting it,
With incentive and apprehension pulling me.

6. I have not stopped being distressed
After the separation. And what use is distress?

7. Its entertainments are devoid of every melody.
My tears flow over its traces, repelled.

8. If the clouds are stingy with their rain,
Or the drops withhold, they flow unrestrained by evening.

9. The lands of India were watered by every passerby’s tears
From their eyes, when the drinker leaves off.

10. I still ask every lightning flash
That spends the night between the clouds' bracelets, writhing.

11. As if they are my sighs when, after separation,
In their nearness I still have hope.

12. Oh heart, woe to you, how you refuse their estrangement
So you wake for a while, then are deluded anew!

13. You are not the first that a shining one has deserted
At the dwellings, nor the first that a wailer has lamented.

14. You have remained with me and what I desired of attachment
Until the garments of grief overcame me and I took them off.

15. You have undertaken the heavy burden of painful separation,
Bearing it, so how can you undertake the burden of distance?

16. Each day the camel litter of separation is prepared
To depart with hatred whoever you love or settle with.

17. This is a heart that length of absence does not overturn
Nor with blame restrained.

18. Misfortune repels it from love
And tricks dissuade it.

19. And love, in the doctrine of all lovers,
Is a chronic illness whose origin is infatuation.

20. They had promises – but the loved ones betrayed them
And those covenants were broken, except what a pity they did!

21. Our neighbors – blessed were the days of peace
When the house was close and the family together.

22. After that closeness to your houses, I refuse
And estrangement from seeing you perplexes me.

23. As for passion, you know my response,
But patience is out of the question.

24. I claim no fortitude against it, nor
Say I am clad in the armor of patience.

25. Who can cool for me those burning nights
If only after long separation they could be regained!

26. In days of playfulness with you I had
Before the departure and the home’s remoteness, an expanse.

27. O inhabitants of the highlands, after your presence
I have no benefit in life.

28. Before the departure I was not content with union.
Today after departure I am content with mirage.

29. You have filled my heart with longing, burning,
And chastity, estrangement – more than it can contain.

30. Meeting was connected to the hours,
And today who do I have, if only it could be found?

31. O composer of poetry – this in its splendor
Is of the unprecedented rhetoric.

32. It will not be confined to contrived verse
Nor in the footnotes of its diction, any beast of burden.

33. It is poetry and magic – if you delude thereby
Minds for a moment, the keenest minds will incline.

34. This composition which has become pliant to me
In its forging the arranger is obstinate.

35. If it were a sermon, it would increase the greatness
Of sermons and crowds on their festivities.