1. Only your nearness can cure my sickness,
Without reunion the ailing cannot heal.

2. O you who spurn me, how strange is love -
That the spurned should still call the spurner.

3. Say to those who blame me for loving them:
Did you shorten your rejection, or lengthen it?

4. I wonder what they will say, now that
Love has stood still for them - what can they say?

5. For the sake of passion minds have gone astray,
Bewildered by their treatment of me.

6. Love is fixed, whether you wish it or not,
So ask the impossible of me, if you wish.

7. Lightning flashes and I weep from sadness,
As I see the abode, and longing tears me apart.

8. I do not deny love's lessons;
All wisdom in its matters relies on passion.

9. I accept the judgments of love,
Whether you are inclined to blame or forgive.

10. When I rebelled against you
Passion said to me: "How can you leave?"

11. For me love's proof is clear,
So cease your doubts, for the proof is clear.

12. Spare me talk of my body
Which (like) your slender waists has suffered.

13. It and the breeze - when I address it
After you - are useless, useless.

14. How excellent is the image I address
Though I cannot grasp its words.

15. And my pillow - excellent in passion!
Whenever the long night stretches for me.

16. My love is like it - or like you -
May we never lose little or much!

17. An infatuation with you I've borne
Since the days of youth - it cannot disappear.

18. My messenger to you is the morning breeze;
I do not fear it, even if the messenger betrays.

19. So my love for you always remains,
For all time, in a state that will not change.

20. And yearning that shortens time, whenever
We are long parted, and longings that persist.

21. And a struggle that comforts me
Whenever the camels depart the encampment.

22. And firm covenants in love
That will not collapse though the fickle protest.

23. And tears flowing down my cheeks
Whenever the departure is prepared.

24. And the pressing need for them, whenever
The living is far from the place of mourning.

25. So the raging winds are sorrow behind them,
Unable to reach their full distances like the torrents.

26. For nearby they are like auroras, but I have
True determination which brings success.

27. In a stance where the oryx was subjugated,
So for it in the sanctuary is impact and echo.

28. And where the air is fragrant and the canes
Are a goal the horses stumble into.

29. Adorning them is the stab in their sides
As their valor adorns the valiant warriors.

30. And doves - we are in the watering-places of protection
Agitated when the water drawers departed.

31. We and the watering places - a slight shade
Was extended over the meadows.

32. They warbled under it, so I revealed to them
A grief beyond which there is no beautiful patience.

33. And I recalled the covenant in the abode, though
The friend had betrayed over the distance.

34. So for them in the watering place is a responsion, while I
In the mute effigies have lamenting and wailing.

35. I compose poetry about its ruins
And my copious tears irrigate its soil.

36. If only its people of former times
Could hear the passion of my poetry - what I say!

37. For its meanings to the people of the land
Are the sorceries of the branding iron and the comprehensive expression.

38. It shook the people of poetry with rapture
When I recited it - it does not fail.

39. With speech that was so subtle I made it
Smooth as a pavement or told of by the brook.

40. So in every heart is relief for it,
And every creature accepts it.