1. My yearning companions, my sighs and pains
And my refusal to drink from the goblet

2. Though yesterday, had it sparked,
How many a goblet was presented to me, unadorned

3. I lean towards it gently, out of desire
No wonder or shame in the yearning of the suckling babe

4. And I hold it longingly before I sip
From it to my liver and burning heart

5. And I say to the revived one with it, leave me be
Don’t pant, for I am not one with hooves

6. Oh near one never run dry, and oh you who bring regrets, take
And pour for me, O cupbearer, pour until I’m knocked over

7. How much did I revel in its whispers, how much
Was I enraptured by the rhymes of an eloquent leader

8. The chaste and pure are witnesses
Ask them about the amazing creativity

9. Today I have resolved to not perceive beauty
Despite the echo unless you are with me, with me

10. Laila, shall I drink it while your cup is empty?
Then I would be pouring and you have the right to accuse

11. Above the roar of hell, and hell
Roars and moans in my ribs

12. Oh my loneliness and bewilderment
While I wander destitute in the barren wilderness

13. Or my burning, and my worries and obsessions
And my discontent and restlessness in my bed

14. Who will comfort me when
Memories stir and wipe away my tears?

15. My homeland, how can a nightingale live
Between a striking serpent and a croaking toad?

16. In a family which resented me for my compassion
Towards its poor, my candor and aloofness

17. Time has oppressed them, oh its wretched ones, glut yourselves
And destiny has tyrannized, oh its croaking frogs, gorge yourselves

18. The intimate spring would not have been my destination
Had I been deadened, unfeeling and unaware

19. A pity that the blossoms open
Among the muck and the bog

20. My homeland, you denied a right of mine
Yet preserved the right of the reckless vagrant

21. Had I a drum and flute, you would not
Have exiled me, or had I a place in the convent

22. This is the punishment of my homeland and my crime
Is that in despair, I did not kneel

23. So I remained in my house like a falcon complaining
Had we been elsewhere, we would not have stayed

24. I will remain as long as fate desires
And leave it without a farewell

25. Roll up your net, oh wanton one, for I
Am no treacherous, fickle pretender

26. The sinner was created marked, so he dwelled in it
While I was created and lived unmarked

27. My homeland, I complained to you of the echo, so you
Filled my cup, and I did not have to drain the bitter draught

28. And I suppressed at the dawn of youth my hopes
And wept for them, if only they had not risen

29. My longing for my wounded heart, and my agony
What did it reap? If only I had not sown

30. The monkey has become a player in my field
And the son of the disloyal has become a grazing sheep

31. God is greatest! How can the right of one who
Rode the crooked path be preserved, while the right of the brilliant is trampled?

32. Rather, how can that transgressor become safe
When his guilt is proven, and he claims innocence?

33. Is it from justice, Lord, that I suffer and
Reluctantly complain of my wounds to the physician?

34. My homeland, the new house has neighbors,
if not for passion for them I would not have been lost

35. She has not reached twenty, graced with
Charm, elegance, coquetry and aloofness

36. Love is dominant, and if not for its bond
You would have heard in the wilderness what you have not heard

37. From a nightingale whose arrow you shot
So it fell, and who will aid the pained nightingale?

38. Perhaps her nights will feather their wings
Which were not inclined to those four

39. With its vines, gazelles, gardens
Its flowers, and its hovering fragrance

40. My longing for it has hurt me, my longing for it
My longing for Laila and those four nights

41. My homeland, the day of departure will not be shameful
For a heart-broken, fragmented poet

42. Distressed, whom worries have cracked his heart
So it crumbled in a socket that did not sleep

43. He confides his visions, so O nightingale echo them
And he wept his sorrows, so O doves return them

44. He reviews the past with a tearful eye
And a heart dispersed in memories

45. He never bowed except for Laila
And never bent to any but the sultan of passion

46. He was pulled only by her beauty and grace
And by nothing but the whispers of his conscience was he split

47. How many nights he recited her apparition in the darkness
And scattered his longings until dawn

48. Infatuated, weeping and kissing her image
And pressing it to his fragmented heart

49. And by the fragrance of her scarf, how much intoxication
For his ardent, hopeful, broken heart

50. So when will her shackles be undone, that he may settle
In those gardens with the rhyming birds?