1. They who love knew whom I loved, if truth be told
My torment by them is bliss profound

2. A little gentleness and hand from lovers suffices
When their knowledge surrounds what they impart

3. Lovers shunned me, though had they known
What remoteness of passion makes me undergo

4. The raptures of remembrance convulse me fatally
When the pure wine of longing turns their memory about

5. And I sag from fires of hankering in scorched throes
When the brimming cup outpours their drink

6. I would not have survived their loss in sadness
Does regret restore the vanished days?

7. A folk, when I say: long absence oppresses me,
Their blood-red wine makes yearn for their society

8. A folk who surrendered me to tribulation—would that they
From fate and its events had safety!

9. I weep and the tears weep with me
When I inscribe my complaint

10. Of the sundering, of its hours—
My pen

11. If I concealed enmity or pondered it
My feet had not run to their homelands

12. I loved them while youth’s blossoms blow
Neither have I asked, and this the head with age shot through

13. Upon my withered frame passion flings
When the lightning smiled I said: In this manner

14. Would I too smile before the baggage camels kneel
They went. By me from the fires of longing remains

15. What the saddle with its bags could not contain
No sooner had the baggage camels knelt

16. Save terrified and tearful that I welcome them
O my boon friend, where are our nights of peace?

17. They sped apace; hours in the world but a dream
Regard with me: does lightning gleam unleashing itself

18. Like an unsheathed blade?—or is no sign from their land seen?
For my eyes as their riding beasts went from the meadows

19. Are accused, because the copious tears pour down.
Marvel at fires of passion in me though my eyes

20. Weep tears from the sundering heaped up flames
In my hearing laments for them from the slanderers,

21. And tittle-tattle they came with—to which I am deaf
Shall I complain of them, when they are those I complained to?

22. My love in time past did not weary them nor bore
I would blame them for a moment but am prevented

23. By the kindness I found with them
My heart refuses to forget their benevolence though mislaid

24. Or distract it others...
In every hair of me a friend to promises,

25. Seduced by their troth though their troth has passed
Where are the loved ones? Nothing equals them in my eyes

26. Though they rule justly or unjustly
Were I to meet death thirsting, and told: “Name what you wish!”

27. I would name them.
They showed rarely after, leaving me no hope

28. That I looked for, saving the pangs within my bowels
Why do my tears as they were effused

29. With the sundering pour, and this their house?
Is it from change in what lies between them and I

30. When I relied on a troth that cannot be undone?
Or from apprehension of ill I assume, fearing for my soul

31. After they vanished?
Tears accustomed my lids, O their dwellings, preserving for you

32. My vow—had fate not watered you my gaze would have.
But how can an echo give drink to the ruins

33. When tears weaned by separation run blood?
It was changed to desolation after they journeyed from it

34. Leaving no trace for memory of them to know
I would not have envied what I possessed

35. When I was miserly beyond all else but love of them.
And when I learned—and this a trait time

36. Made known—that the noble soul will be oppressed.
Fate either lives or dies according as

37. Matter frays and its patches come apart.
The Pleiades inclined over the sand-dunes their necks,

38. Overtaken by sleep so the summits leaned
On them the length of night trailing its skirt, nor can

39. The owl but moan and fret.
At a place the beetles buzzing in the stationary camp,

40. Its circumference as the Pleiades come and go
They went astray but Providence guided them while trails lie buried,

41. Counsel, though ruin be there, and night, and gloom
Many a meter I preceded but whose headlong career

42. No curb checked, falling short of it
Scarcely did reason weigh its course

43. Ere the obliging rhymes crowded thick
I stayed them not, designated no staging post,

44. Though they were strangled at their necks by decree
They come, their words pleasing when heard,

45. Morals and wisdom in their folds
From every rhyme I continued to declaim

46. By thought, which it elected to accord
I strung them like pearls so when they cohered

47. The pearl might learn from them how it may be formed
Yet they in an age that sets them back

48. So thought bears fruit, or nations write verse!