1. O you who in the night recalls his passionate love,
And whose wakeful eyes its inhabitant does not let sleep!

2. A quarter that the morning breeze has wrapped
In its wings, till its sheltering walls lost shape,

3. To it, at nightfall, every wild thing leads, as though
It were an obscene thing the wastelands called to indecorousness.

4. It remained, after good men and its righteous dwellers,
The ostrich of the sanctuary after all the rest, and its belated inhabitant,

5. As we see Layla, and Layla stays there
In promiscuous throng, whose free women you cannot tell apart,

6. Layla whom the lurkers put to shame, so that she became
To have, below me, a doubtful, sidelong glance, askance,

7. I see myself, when I visit Layla and her husband,
Her fingers writhe in hatred of me, askance,

8. If I visit her one day, behind me follows no watcher,
No enemy I fear, no rival I beware,

9. As if, on a wall daubed dark, an observant eye
Keeps watch on its seat, or one who oversees, looks on,

10. He is so cautious that he thinks all people
Have, from fear, no secret hidden from them,

11. Tomorrow the living will quit, from among the tall spears, after
The herd of destruction ran, and its hurricanes raged,

12. To summon them to the sword of the sea, or the belly of separation,
An passionate resolve of Layla's people whose steeds were harnessed.

13. They departed with a mortgage on my heart, and before
The southern winds, with it they bartered and chaffered,

14. I recalled the southern winds, and below them,
The reaches of rivers approached, and their bridges,