1. Does the fragrance of Layla's night visitor heal
The agony of passion that so consumes me?

2. Between the encampments love provoked tumult—
On the eve when the time of parting was appointed.

3. Have you not seen how, whenever my eyes
Wander her way, longing leaps up inside me?

4. We halted in a camp whose folk had struck their tents
And gone, and there remained no tear but flowed

5. As if what ruins survived of their traces
Were pages a Jew had erased of its diacritics.

6. I'll not forget, when they said "Depart!" and turned
Their camel-litters away, tall and towering.

7. They said, "The crow of estrangement caws with the pack-beasts!"
Would that estrangement's crow were struck dumb!

8. So I compared the stabbing pain of their leaving
To the swaying of a lissome palm's topmost crown.

9. A little fox from the thicket professes his love,
Lost in the maze his vixen has within her.

10. My friend refused any but a new moon for his crescent,
Its settings in his face, its risings too.

11. As if, when his yawning mouth gapes after slumber,
The spittle in it were old, aged wine.

12. For my love the spring—for his cheeks disclose
A rose blossoming, and there bud violets.

13. His down guides the musk, as his fingers guide
Coins to his purse, the spoon to the table.

14. His smooth cheek adorns the wine-haunted revels
When all cheeks the vine's inebriation decks.

15. Were his bright cheek to meet the gaze of one vigil-keeping,
That gaze in his cheek would confound its intent.

16. Between us nothing but a stolen glance, I thieving
At times, and at times he stealing from me.

17. If only a heart not weaned, still at the breast,
Could know the grief in the heart of one sundered!

18. My care is stirred by night's falling starless curtain,
My tears flowing free in the morn's bright daybreak.

19. How monks' voices have rasped my hearing with litanies,
Yet he never heard what his comrade complained of!

20. A rending when the riding camels spread out their bedding—
As if their hobbles and pegs were those of eagles!

21. Their leg joints seem as if seared by sparks from the hearthfires,
Whenever their towering bodies swerve in the saddle.

22. The firewood's blaze on their backs brings to mind flashes
Of lightning amid ships' timbers floating in darkness.

23. I traversed, while night's darkness spread out its skirts,
A mettlesome steed the mountains cannot turn back.

24. Scornful his legs of bit's constraint and whip's coercion—
His bridle apt in the hand of a guide who knows horsemanship.

25. He courses like the wind through every stony waste,
Far from the land of myrrh's tender, pliant boughs.

26. His hooves make the pebbles fly as though they were
Golden dinars from the striking of the engraver's die.

27. You'd think the tangled, dusty mane upon his chest
Was a cloud of pigeons fluttering up in alarm.

28. He folded the fifth mile upon the fifth until
I saw him dark red with the straining and the sweat.

29. How many a chestnut in the horse herds grew up fatherless,
Many a bay tawny as resin orphaned of dam!

30. Without him to ride I could not have spanned those deserts—
He it was made me dare so long and grueling a trek.

31. There watered the valley of the two meadows a downpour
From a raincloud each time its lightning flashed.

32. A lodging that when the Pleiades set within it
Is embraced by its ruins and open courts.

33. It takes on the lovely features of a garden at dawn,
For beauty's detail enhances loveliness.

34. You see blossoms like wrought gold when it shows
Its pearls and thin stamens that nod.

35. The dewdrops mimic what wells up in the eyes
When they glance—just like mercury gleaming.

36. Bough over bough bends gently breeze-stirred
As friend toward friend leans, embracing him close.

37. Gardens of beauty to steal eyes' sight,
For the garden owes its beauty to these gardens.

38. How many sealed books whose bindings were undone
For slave girls' hands to unravel and unfold!

39. At a joyful gathering I shared in its cheer,
Competing in revels with all its fair maidens.

40. I spent the night being openhanded with wine along with
Some beauty whose manners no fault could be seen in.

41. When the cupbearer poured it forth it glowed and shone
To delight them, his goblets and ewers.

42. When the boon companions smelled its fragrance it was as though
Musk's scent from it came wafting through breaches.

43. No beloved has ever estranged me who loved me,
No friend I befriended has ever spoken harshly.

44. Yet if the door of misfortune one day should gall me
I'd not be distressed by its straitening influence!

45. In my dealings I've always sought the path
Of doing what's right, for that shows the true heart.

46. Loyal am I if I pledge my word to another,
No good the one whose documents prove his betrayal.

47. Only he attains the heights who shows his hand and character
To be worthy of trust, and his promises valid.

48. My nature refuses abasement when perils encircle—
The bane rending the souls of our armed companies.

49. O Lord of an army whom morning surprised with a raid
Rendering useless their javelins and shield rims—

50. All were a feast for the birds in every quarter,
Ravens and kites picking bare their remains.

51. We are a people staunch in the face of battle-dust
Whenever war's dust rises fog-like in clouds.

52. Yet some envy my poetry, though I've never envied
Another creature—when God Most High is the Provider.

53. So you who aim to surpass me—I have seen
The hybrid outpaced by the thoroughbred racer.

54. With my words' poison I have made foes taste
The viper's venom—and that venom destroys the taster.

55. Ask them, when he sucked venom from his mother's teat
Did it flow sweet, or corrode the sucker's palate?

56. Where now can the wretch look for one like me
When my lines hurl down lightning upon him?

57. I have tasted the calumny of fellow poets—
But poison only kills the one who swallows it.