1. Who can I trust in love, tell me who
If only lovers had never existed nor been created

2. My right hand was bound to them with assured ties
Our affection was entwined between us

3. But time changed a state I was accustomed to
And their love for me, while being tasted, is altered

4. So after them, passion is an imprisonment upon me
My tears flow after the beloved like a torrent set free

5. A crime that a day of repression brought about
Messages carried between us by eyelids

6. Oh eye, their caravan has departed
And your familiar anguish remains with tears and sleeplessness

7. What is this first separation in love?
No heartstring of mine remains except it is plucked

8. An agony I used to complain of when vigor was in me
Today, that vigor fails against it

9. For me, after them, is the scorching of my sighs’ fire
And for me, with my tears on their ruins, is drowning

10. Shall I spend the night and no flashes trouble me
Darting about the sandy hills flickering

11. Kindling the fires of passion, and I have
No eyelid that wipes so that my body burns

12. The flames of ardor and heat of longing aflame
Fueled by recollection and anxiety

13. How can love forget the pouring that disquiets it
After the beloveds, dawn and dusk

14. Startled by the onslaught of darkness coming
And lurking as it scatters in the morning

15. No sunrise glimmered on the horizon
Except my tears for it would rise in the east

16. Shall I see my caravan still undeparted
Driven by fidelity and nearness of communion?

17. Yearning for a lodging in the meadow they safeguarded not
The pact of love nor felt compassion nor showed gentleness

18. Is this how those were who fell in love or became enamored?
Or is this a trait distinctive to me alone

19. Which passion uncovered in me, for passion wanders
To a halt where the traveling party stopped

20. When its perfume exuded from it, musky
Of one slain at the vestiges from a howdah

21. I did not recognize it, as I did not recognize its landmark
Save for perfume of musk exhaling from its soil

22. Young females gaze at it longingly
Cloaked, hindered, docile, soft, pouring forth

23. Slipping out from undulations of the dunes
Like the crescent moon emerging from its veil of dusk

24. Not passing a hollow in the land perforated
Until a gloomy darkness appeared like a chasm torn open

25. Roaming it, bleating, wandering unguided
Hoping flashes of lightning for it might appear

26. My peers of poetry, how many sought
To catch up with my glory but fatigue overcame them and they attained not

27. All those among them vain and resentful
Cast by the two deluders, ignorance and grudge

28. I glanced at what they composed, a glance
Of one who understands, and it was a poetry they lapsed in religion by

29. They innovated while I was absent, tattered verse
Until I came to their circle but they spoke not

30. They came and I came, and their steeds were exhausted
So in the arena, the outstripping was mine before them