1. Did you not see me draw near on purpose to Ramla
And don the garments of distress, whatever the dress?

2. I go as I come, sad and yearning,
From harm and tribulation, and I become in the evening as I was in the morning.

3. Did you spurn my question when it was said I satirized you?
Oh, would that you be pleased, and I would satirize my own soul for you.

4. So how can I find fault with the full moon without cause?
With what could he be blamed? Nay, how could I be hostile to the sun?

5. Shall I satirize him whom if the mute were charged to praise,
The tongues of the mute could not praise him enough?

6. I am incapable, then, in love of my lot, and in my passion for him
I have swerved from the ways of eloquence into perplexity.

7. The beauty of Muhammad surpassed the beauty of the houris,
So what think ye, O people, of the jinn and mankind?

8. If estrangement from you has left for me a place of grief,
I would never for a day have desisted from union with you at a wedding feast.

9. I wished I did not live until tomorrow,
For fear of that which I encountered from you yesterday.

10. My pen wept from sorrow, and both my hands,
When they wrote, until they made my pages bleed.