1. O home, O home of my troubles and griefs
I have worn out the newness of your new songs

2. If I left behind my playfulness and dwelling
I was wedded to my anxiety and sorrows

3. A breeze came to you in the wake of dawn
Watering earth in you, no longer moistened

4. Until I see the light in your valley smiling
As if it were an eyelid without eyelashes

5. When I stood at the ruins, they made me weep
What had made me laugh and play of them

6. So what do I say to a time whose hand scattered
My family, and emptied homes of loved ones

7. Whatever blessings came my way, wearing them
Except they hastily bared me of them

8. How many favors did friends know their companion
When gone, denying after recognition

9. And a worry, a cloak of muscle resembling
I tore it, while night and dawn were its stitches

10. The wind pulls the edges of the cloak as
The brother cried out to awaken and sharpen

11. Until I folded over the belly of she-camel
As if her creation built structures

12. As if her soft feet in travel carried her
The buckets of a well dangling between cliffs

13. She has a bridle, and when I saw its revolution
I thought in my hands the coils of a snake

14. To a crescent whose night was stripped from it
In creation, its Maker formed it into a human

15. Exile parted us, with hearts still with you
So free my heart, or return my body to me

16. I whom your love left no favor
To another human or jinn

17. So if you want union, accept my prayer
From me, or else estrangement with estrangement

18. Affection in me is not conveyed to other tastes
Nor do I cast myself where you urge me

19. I want no love if love be not
For my soul, and love and death be equal

20. Lord of a secret, as latent as flint-stone fire
I prefer to conceal it within me, so revive me

21. My speech did not expand with a revealing sin
Nor, confined, was it too narrow for my hiding

22. Lord of a fire I kept burning all night
On a February night of confusion

23. Restraining glances on their paths
As if they wore the clothes of monks

24. I kept calling by the fire’s light drawing near
Its glow tempting the darkness of excited man

25. I have a horse that splits the dust of war for me
Foremost, fearless, and resolute

26. With upright stance, mounted
In joints thirsty, with shriveled nerves

27. Where there is no rescue but a remembering sword
And a coat of mail like drops of water protecting me

28. With a mount like the pulley of a well rising
In blueness kindling like an awakened star

29. Greetings I ransom you, have I stripped of my favors
A being? And have I smelled with robes of conferral?

30. And have I mixed my clear drink for a friend? And have I, O Hind,
Deposited in storage other than praise?

31. I did not show irreverence with the cup-bearer’s goblet
Nor abstain while time kept tempting me

32. I concealed sorrow with it, and the heart was restless
Gone announcing falsely my proclamation

33. Many a night I lay awake, for lightning that flew
While sleep had sewn eyelid to eyelid

34. In thunderous excitement like the trembling of a mountain
As if its rumbling the keening of bereaved women