1. You strode to my pond while you strode,
Your love held between two hillocks like a dune,

2. Starry-eyed like a maiden's ankle bracelet, fasting,
More passionate in your doubt of time, a watcher,

3. And a shaykh's mosque where you used to greet
Now and then in the ways of a youth,

4. Where there dwelt a heartbroken one.
Tomorrow there will be three whom their keeper never sleeps,

5. And I remain sleepless over three who have no keeper,
Pangs of sorrow for a lover that torment him

6. When he passes through transgression and returning,
So it is inevitable that maidens will envelop you

7. When you enveloped her, a weeper and non-weeper.
You shaded eyes that pained your eye after

8. A tear flowed from it and crying ceased.
And the day a timid, diffident Easterner met

9. You sufficed yourself with another while still unsure.
You steal through life in its gown, youthfulness,

10. From her eyes that observe you and are clear.
When you visit ruins that remain in the encampment

11. They fill you with ardent love while they are sweet.
And the eye napped on you during its siestas

12. Secrets it did not confide to an articulate one.
When will you know the house whose people showed

13. In my bliss, for tears are near you?
You remember whom you loved when you were a youth,

14. A boy, and so he is brought back to you, a beloved.
Nights that yearn for company, strange,

15. For the fuel of secrets while they are absent.
And when the estranged ones’ pots boil early

16. For us, while the branch of youth is yet fresh,
While we are with the outcasts, our day

17. Is hard, and our night is but wakefulness,
And when we meet behind the eyes as though we are

18. Friends of wine with the cupbearer, mixed,
And if an eye witnesses, it overlooks and turns

19. To the eye that will be absent.
People see that we are remote, and beneath it

20. Are entrances that sweeten and gentle for us.
So that corrupted life after its harmony

21. With the gossip of scandalmongers, for them stingers.
And the effort of malicious busybodies between me and her

22. With what the malicious have no share of.
And the gaze of an eye that did not don a cloak

23. Saw me sitting alone, and in me, a bachelor.
So it said: one whose endurance is weak consults

24. His soul which of things is most difficult.
It guessed the secret of what was in my feelings

25. And not every guess of those who say hits true.

26. So I came to lack her favor, needing
What she said, apart from that, outcasts.

27. Its appointment was made difficult so we cannot
Counter what who reproaches us and blames says.

28. May God water her favor from a mixture that distances,
Though I am where you love, perturbed.

29. My excuse from the blamers is they do not leave me
To my worry. But among the wise there is an articulate one.

30. They say: if you cheer up your heart it will be sated
So I said: and do lovers have hearts?

31. They promise me a heart but I do not deny
Debasement, nor does the unsure one accept debasement.

32. What is the heart but for one whom if you debase
He longs for a drink that clears and sweetens for him?

33. I say to a heart that is not mine but that however much
I longed for ardent love, it dodged me.

34. O heart that turned away with it
The bliss of the Bakr clan, do you not accuse yourself?

35. You make Su‘da hope through what I branched with her
An intention between peers of the mixture, outcasts.

36. Every day you wish Su‘da with a new lie
And lies will not avail you.

37.
If the nearest advisor calls you with his voice