1. Tears are no longer a disgrace after the departure of loved ones.
So why do you still show patience while the camels are saddled?

2. After the camels have departed from the campsite,
Is there any patience against the pain of loss and of settling down?

3. All calamities of separation are painful.
So let your overflowing tears run.

4. Do not let fear of slanderers stop you from visiting her.
Passion is understood and secrets spread.

5. Stop with me at the ruins and mourn what time has erased -
Desolate places that were once friendly.

6. Dwellings that union had illuminated in every corner
Now have no light but that of my passion.

7. Those homes - nothing left but their ruins
And a stream of tears flows from my eyelids.

8. I still linger in their courtyards with their people,
My heart wounded, though they were places of joy.

9. An encampment I reached, the farthest limits of wishes,
And the people were my neighbors before departure.

10. Days when I was a flowering youth,
Wearing the prime of burdah that cannot be blamed.

11. A burdah whose youthful freshness
Has been taken by the passage of time.

12. Until the first signs of white hair appeared, which no longer
Brought peace or dignity to life.

13. And, by my Lord, many a garden I loved,
With anemones and flowers on both sides.

14. The hand of fate has numbered its carpets
Where the moths now spread out.

15. The breeze blows fragrantly over its ground
As if attar perfumes its soil.

16. The doves coo at dawn upon its branches
Answered by jesters among them.

17. I turned away from it when magic departed at dawn.
Its enchanters emptied it of those glades and left,

18. And I turned away from it, though deep in my heart
There was burning anger and rage toward them.

19.
And sleep - since the sweet ones left the encampment

20. And the beautiful ones departed - has turned to wakefulness.

21. As for days with them, few they were,
Yet they have left embers in my heart.

22. Days of union were nothing but fires
And days of play nothing but embers.

23.
I have not wavered from the ways of love after

24. Folly and guilt mixed into them.
My companion, hear my lament

25. From one distraught whom remembrance has destroyed after the loss.
I cannot forget what you both said one morning

26. When the camel-litters were loaded up.
Everyday there is anguish for you in the dwellings -

27. The houses echo with it.
And roaming kindles passion for you and its embers,

28. Between the meadows are parting and vestiges.
What else is passion but a pounding heart,

29. Fearful of loss, with copious tears?
And the yearning of one deprived of peace

30. Nearly kills me when the breeze blows toward the beloved and I grow jealous.
And I have heard ardent love sing to its people -

31. If warnings could save one from the madness of passion!
As for passion, its nights in estrangement are long

32. While days of union are short.
So too the dawn of white hair is a night, just as

33. The night of youth for the eyes was day.
Youth has departed and I do not see it visiting me

34. After its going, nor do I see it being visited.
A time whose youthful bloom

35. Once arrested all eyes.
Who can supply me with the elixir of its epoch,

36. To which, apart from all eras, one can refer?
For it, if the veils of modesty thicken,

37. There pierce them, despite what the prudish may detest.
And my poetry has a swift effect on minds -

38. What is most gently gained is the least potent drug.
Poetry - when they recite it, it is as if

39. The wine cup circulates in song.
Poetry, among mankind, is a refuge

40. Wearing this rhymed composition as a bracelet.
A tree whose branches are my obsessions

41. And whose magnificent meanings are its fruit.
Safe from every distant consonance being seen

42. On the day of judgment as their worth turns to dust.
Through it great rewards are gained

43. And by it gross sins are dismissed.
It is disdainful of suitors so they shun it

44. And through it there is refusal toward them and aloofness.
It has free choice while none else has choice