1. My neighbor was amazed to see me asleep
While my eyes had closed and my worries multiplied

2. She said to Sa'ada and another, her ally
"What's bothering him, though I thought him calm?"

3. I said, "I've kept my love's torments from you
Until they accumulated and I leaned on them

4. I stayed up because of a beauty whose worries
Crept over me while her home barred me out

5. She was the desire of my soul and my demise
If only fate had brought me nearer to her

6. If only her funeral bier could speak
That she died yesterday or mourn her forever

7. For when I remember her, my heart melts,
And my eyes weep to endure the grief and wakefulness

8. If I'm not lovesick for you, life has no joy
Nor is there anyone like you when I'm upset

9. You promised me but didn't keep your word
So you were like rain clouds that thundered but did not pour

10. When you're away, longing calls me
And when you're near, you deny the longing one

11. I'm worn out while distance remains causing sorrow
And I don't see my heart healed by distance

12. I keep the promise and pact's due
A free man is only virtuous if he keeps his word

13. I swore an oath I won't break
When I stood, not daring to transgress it

14. If my heart could choose who to love
It would choose Sa'ada and prefer none other

15. If you abandoned me and people opposed me
I'd find no one I missed if you weren't there

16. You left me with a heart busy with work
Yearning, without a parent I love or child

17. Oh sorrows and griefs, my sisters
Fear your God, I'm dying, wasted away

18. It's as if I'm a worshipper in my love to see her
For a lover seems to be one who worships

19. I don't look up in the gathering when they speak
But stay bowed down among them forever

20. With a soul's worry remembering you all
When I speak my enflamed heart burns

21. While my heart is caught up with you
It's not alarmed by whoever stands or sits

22. You've worn out my body and my soul isn't safe
From what has tempted my flesh reaching my spirit

23. Aren't you ashamed of what you've accused me of
Among women, for one who's chaste and asleep?

24. If he had strength your torture would spare him
And I'm weaker than one with strength and endurance

25. But in love bodies grow feeble
For the sweet one until the liver is fatigued

26. So I won't be hard in what you've said
Since I wasn't created firm or impregnable

27. She said, "I see you're avoiding visiting us"
Though the alive may visit whomever they wish

28. I said, "Those who lie in ambush against me
Have prevented me from visiting you all

29. Oblivious to the good in their midst
Shrewder in evil than knowing what's right

30. No harm to your folk, Sa'ada, that I don't see them
If a lover visited would they say, 'Welcome'?

31. Frowning kept me from visiting you
Out of love for you, though you didn't reward that with chains

32. Staying up, on the lookout for any glimmer
If a bouquet had been presented I would have visited

33. So when the eyelids had fully tired
She sent me a message—come if you can make it out—

34. And she'd perfumed the earth she sat on that night
Before the message till it was fragranced

35. I left no finery until I wore for her
New clothes to complete them on the morrow

36. On a night late in the fasting month, missing
Twenty nine, I had counted the days

37. Until I climbed up to her on a balcony
Under the sky, its shade climbed high

38. When she glimpsed me disheveled
Green, red, and yellow all mixed together

39. She said to the ground she was sitting on
The disheveled one has come, screen me from him

40. And be kind when you greet him
Don't be curt if we converse for a bit

41. Hide nearby and come back, for our need
Is not for one far, though our hearts are filled

42. The estrangement has been long, neither of us unaffected
Until you see complainant and accuser from us

43. So we met and complained and reproached
Fears we don't fear the eye or watchers gone

44. The motes vanished and we drank the night's purity
Two lovers playing, fearing the One, Eternal

45. She said, "How did you come here stealing
Through the enemy's land, the rugged roads?"

46. I said, "My goal has been you, come nearer if you wish
Don't be surprised I answered night's call as a thief

47. I wasn't a bandit or wanderer before you
My Lord, one day a neighbor will say of me:

48. 'The disheveled one I worried for is gone'
I turned away and didn't persist in visiting

49. Preferring love of you, though you didn't reward that with chains
When we finished talking and reproaching

50. And this evil had cooled or frozen
She brought out a flower whose turban wasn't spun

51. When the flask inclined, its cup bowed
Flowing like wine, his cheeks and altar

52. We draw near it and complain of our souls' woes
In night talk until the dark departs

53. When a rooster crowed, his enmity flared up
At dawn, it had been good but he ruined it

54. She got up swaying to family watching her
Her gait like a fleeing camel seemed crippled

55. And the eye sheds a steady tear
Over the tracks of tears that had dried

56. As if it were a pearl whose strands crumbled
So the first trickled down the thread, rushing away

57. And I got up, having spent with her there
Only talk, and touched a hand

58. Until I went out while fate, since then, tore away
What the two had knotted and united