1. Do not promise me an easy night while I sleep
Frightened for my pillows.

2. I fear the sword if I encounter the enemy,
And I fold up worries and a hurting heart.

3. A wasting soul and leaning on purpose,
And what good leaner but a guide?

4. And I had turned my heart from the thing
Out of shyness while its love is in blackness.

5. I hold back the soul with chastity and I spend the night
Remembering the talk of enemies in the morning.

6. That is when my love of the rebel
Is still an imagination that visits me in slumber.

7. Then it fell short, and love does not fall short,
As if I made it part of my lineage.

8. Because legs are heavy, lovers walk
Like a swaying branch of basil.

9. She laughed at me with cool but sweet water,
Radiant like a flaming star.

10. Then she was pleasant in color and eye until
My love almost flew with me from my pillow.

11. She is the full moon of the sky, no, she is the sun
Lowered in a sunset and bodies.

12. I do not make the enviers happy in her, and she spends the night
A wailing in the joy of the enviers.

13. She leaves intimacy, then follows with distance,
So woe to me from her nearness and farness.

14. A generous one in sleep gives me the soul
But awake there is no generosity for us.

15. She walks well in dreams but does not
Walk well awake the walk of the dubious deviator.

16. So forgive me, O mother of Bakr, for love
In my speech and my eyes has flourished.

17. The glance of a lover does not escape notice
Nor the frown of an enemy’s eye in habit.

18. A meeting of an eye with a hated one without meeting
A lover - two eyes without increase.

19. And I said when I was spurned and did not spurn
And my affliction was from affection:

20. Would that my fortune were from servants and from
What Allah created as pleasures for servants!

21. The path of my love, I feel it is seven days
A cure for a wound in the heart.

22. It is my death and my great need,
And my soul if it provided me with provision.

23. I desire her nearness in ease and hardship,
In light and on the day of calling.

24. Say to her, O chirping one, I am
Of longing for her and my uniqueness is in strife.

25. How is my patience alone without attaining?
This has been long in stinginess and loneliness.