1. O night of tender air, who brings you the morn’s good tidings,
And where can rest be found amid the myrtle’s shade?

2. I tasted your water, then Zemzem, but it slaked me not,
Nor cooled my tablet nor assuaged my wounds.

3. I stole a draught from a miser’s pool by stealth one night
Not knowing if ’twould make me drunk or bring me to.

4. I spent an hour with the zephyr, who’ll no more return
With a day of bounty or of clemency.

5. You’ve naught of it but a remembering companion’s glance—
Say but the word and it rekindles the live coal’s glow;

6. Hail to him who fares by night with blessings laden!
Trill Layla’s name as you pass by the hill.

7. Stake my eyes as the dice you cast in fate’s game—
May one glance of hers I love bring me the lucky throw!

8. Ask the doe in the valley, “Is it you or she
Whose gaze engraved upon my heart a wound?”

9. She shied, then flared in rage—such temper for a doe!
But where’s the blame in those who flare enraged?

10. A night whose gentle advent beside you we wore
Like the lining between necklace and breast.

11. Dawn comes and goes but your face’s light stays with us,
A lamp, while the moon’s glow wanes and does not dawn.

12. When the sailing metaphors vying in you both
Were done, you spoke till your wit shone superior.

13. You blame my verse, yet praise that tribe, untouched
By my load of humiliation or jests.

14. On the palfrey of song wild she-wolves closed to rend
What his weakness left them of neck and withers.

15. They refuse the euphony of verse and its beauty
When folly-drunk they plunge in every halting line.

16. For kissing and smelling when day breaks they become
Chewers of it between their crooked fangs.

17. Each dullard fancies glory a bleary-eyed jade
Blinking awake at dawn or skull upturned to drink.

18. When his baying swells in conceit and wind
His mirage-lakes are eloquence to him.

19. For each outlandish freak in his heart enraged
The vengeance of malice is whetting its blade.

20. If bile or boorishness bar him from praise
He primps in dispraise and disparagement.

21. Beneath the wing of a dark night how many
Whose only light was the beaker I upraised!

22. A rhyme arose warring with its Lord
So I fought it a little, and it sued for peace.

23. I attained it, though pipes were clamoring round it,
When I was the lofty spear none could cut down.

24. If you’d test a man to see his worth
Then hear his backbiting or see his wounds.

25. How many kings, had I but left my verse flaunt
My triumph, my conquest with his victory!

26. When lofty wishes roamed, seeking but him,
Far off, he yearned for my star’s rising glow.

27. A boon friend came from the quarter of gentleness, kind,
So I bent my withes and softened my twigs for him.

28. I made him a share that clothed him and fed him
But spendthrift ways led him hankering for more.

29. He haggled with others, marketing praise,
Nor cloaked me his stinginess, mine my tight fist.

30. So I became like a white hen provoked by
A black hen, while the meek one envied the dominant.

31. But Sarjis never turns from truth’s path
Though easy nature lure him to jest.

32. Nor is the long rope of the right shortened by him;
Equity’s not won by toil and moil.

33. When the eggs of the sandgrouse come his way unstinted
Her nest is not decried as the bustard’s.

34. True of loyalty, pure of repute, he whose repute
The tainted reputations address with censure.

35. Spirits are vexed by woes, while his remains
Capacious, with latitudes of mercy.

36. By the lesser of his two words one is content
Though the sword point’s buzzing cuts with a breath.

37. When his mind draws full on eloquence’s waters
He irrigates with a pool envy cannot muddy.

38. He secured through the ministry’s gate a yard
Already his by precedence of wounds.

39. If feet slip one day on a patch of ice
He walks erect, disdaining to crawl.

40. Old hatreds held you, their fuel rancor,
Your flesh their food, and their blaze wrath’s sparks.

41. Galled by enviers, their fangs were bared
To scare timorous deer no advice can tame.

42. Faces smiling to you, while underneath
Frowns of ill intent like the nightshade’s gloom;

43. You I wished well, hoarding no grain of passion
But went spreading my heart, greeting dawn.

44. I loved you in safety and rise to smite
With a blade the napes of those my speech disowns.

45. How many a maiden whose soul I gave you
Freely, though lofty, no gift asked from you.

46. For her between holidays you made assignations,
And between fasts, at Easter had trysts.

47. One reveals beauty, it shows unconcealed,
While another from modesty hides her defects.

48. When the singers stand chanting of her
Turtle-doves echo, woodpigeons moan.

49. And if a year she was absent from your sky
Still with you her leavings of billowy curves.

50. I've no fault if destiny left me sterile,
Robbed of virility, semen denied.