1. Stop with me at a dwelling in the wilderness that time has laid waste
Fate has shown us its lessons in its folds

2. Where are the loved ones whose faces were so beautiful
That they shamed the sun and the moon

3. I stood there but found no trace of them
Among the sand dunes, nor did I hear news of them

4. Loved ones whose talk was kept secret
Until the long separation between us became notorious

5. Had it not been for them, passion would not have prevented me
From what it attempts with me, nor would I resist

6. I kindled the fire of my passion in its playgrounds
With copious tears at the ruins, so it settled

7. And the clouds of my eyelids pouring down
Brought rain to irrigate its soil

8. Oh wilderness, you were my homeland before intention
I reached you despite hostility and crossed rugged terrain

9. I complain to you of an ardour that keeps me awake
When before I did not know sleeplessness

10. Why do you and I renew a yearning in me
For the departed, and remind me of them?

11. To the ruins I complained of what was in me
My passion was a guide that appeared

12. I checked my tears and addressed the dwellings in sorrow
But when their outlines did not answer me, they flowed

13. And I carved from deep longing in the sides of the wilderness
Nearly making the rock speak

14. The sighs of the gentle breeze blew
Upon those meadows, its scent spreading in the night

15. Abodes made fragrant by the breeze’s breath
And its people blessed of old, so the soil was hallowed

16. Those homes my spilling tears watered
Their showers ever pouring down heavily

17. And lightning that did not give drink to the night
Except that my passion returned its sparks twofold

18. It illuminated the darkness, though its tresses
Were contracted on the horizon in plaits

19. So the lightning did not fail except from the flint
Of passion that showed its light and kindled

20. The phantom of the one I loved visited me
Until when he saw me keeping vigil, he fled

21. He came to me, though between the meeting place
In the night is a gulf fraught with perils

22. I wondered how he came though the night had
Lowered its cloak over an eye that knows no sleep

23. And I know not, after his departure that mottled
My cheek, if it was a bright lightning or his face the moon

24. And I asked, while my tears after his separation
Poured down my cheek, shaming rivers in their flow

25. Why do your tears not cease spilling
Whether on a paved floor or one in rubble?

26. They show, in remembering days gone by with him
If he is absent from the land’s assembly or present

27. And of what use after separation is making
Memories of the wavy nights a companion?

28. Can reminiscence restore for you a time of passion
When you praised the flowers and full moons?

29. So I said there is comfort in tears I spill
When I am barred from gazing on the encampment’s folk

30. And in the meadows, when I address their outlines
In verse, and the string of tears scatters and disperses

31. My words adorned every spot among them
And became upon their slopes pearls

32. Poetry with the essence of pure sorcery
Unlike other people’s verse, which seldom enchants

33. When they recite it in their gatherings
It has a fragrance that shames their perfumes

34. So I do not fear it will pall when narrators
Speak it, be they few or many