1. If you haven't visited, the greatest of afflictions is visiting.
Why have you set out when your guide has called you to ride?

2. You left, yet how many are passionately yearning for you in the highlands,
Grieving in the desert, and how many are now abandoned!

3. He has folded his ribs over the flames of longing,
And its fuel is his kindling and igniting.

4. It would ignite passion, and in my anguish and his sighing,
Were a boulder to be touched by the blazing fire.

5. You have combined my torment with yourselves,
And any sin other than parting is forgivable.

6. It suffices me from passion that my eyelids are distanced,
Never meeting, while my fervent longing remains preserved.

7. And a tear flows whenever I recite from my joy
My poetry, so they are two opposites, rhythmic and scattered.

8. It flows in place of the clouds over the meadows of loved ones,
And the night’s darkness is embroidered.

9. Pure-hearted girls the like of whom haven't existed
Since the days of past prosperous times.

10. And time has its people,
Even if they dislike it, and the lands have changes and alterations.

11. O you who bend in sadness, the clouds still have for him
Comfort and exaltation in the rain pouring down.

12. It waters your land, so there appear in your meadows
Wondrous beauties for the onlooker – flowers.

13. And the slender boughs bend when the ostriches sway them while laden,
While the foliage laments dolefully above them at dawn, disclosing signs.

14. Lamenting over the treetops while the murmurs of longing have vanished,
Repeatedly grieving.

15. So if the pact of love yearns with the weeping of leaves,
Then the ally of yearning is forgivable.

16. Since his loved ones left him and so did his neighbor,
The greatest affliction has befallen him and he is terrified.

17. And the groves have compensated him after them with sorrow
While he was once happy and close to them.

18. So time became blameworthy. If only they would
Return to me while it is appreciated.

19. There is no shame to my skin now they have departed,
When passion overcomes me and I am defeated and coerced.

20. I tasked it with love – meaning its heaviness I tolerated –
So exhaustion from it was revealed.

21. Our loved ones – my secret was with you before
The outpouring of my tears while it was concealed.

22. Days when I was brave to people due to my closeness to you,
Smiles would shine from my face.

23. And today my share of your nearness
Has become slight, while it was abundant and plentiful.

24. My heart is sickened that it has now come to demand
Union with you, then is deluded.

25. As if the reunion of kindred after the days of
My familiarity with loving friends is forbidden.

26. Will a journey ever bring them close,
Caravans or swift riding camels?

27. After barriers of military camps, banners and drums
Have come between me and them.

28. I reckon the ally of the war-drums has taken his stance,
There resounding and provoking separation.

29. Until nights of reunion return radiant with them
And the train of my joy while it is dragged along.