1. Whenever your memory comes to mind
Yearning ravages my heart and its secrets

2. Eyes rain with anguish for you
Staying awake all night due to your estrangement

3. My passion for you is extreme, so if you would be kind, keep in touch
Otherwise my ardour and eyes are yours to sacrifice

4. I swear by your beauty I've never met a deterrent
Except that your beauty was my deterrent from it

5. Is not what you put me through enough
Humiliation amongst my peers wears me down

6. Pining that nearly parches my vitals
I fear it may expose my innermost thoughts

7. Your eyes have taken my heart hostage
And I'm still dutiful to my love for you, never to flee

8. Be as you wish, your lover you'll find is still the same
Whether present or absent, never changing

9. I comply with your every whim
Yet you show me no such patience

10. You torment my heart with your distance, and if
I have some favor with you, the rest of me is yours

11. I've frittered my life away in fervent love, that
If I have any hope left, it's for the hereafter

12. Much gossip came between us, and they said
"He left you!" Not so, never will we part

13. And those who blamed you unfairly, I've excused
May you excuse my burden, you whom I'd ransom

14. Your contentment is enough if you bestow
Even an insincere visit, though the visitor knows it's false

15. I spent my days in the injustice of estrangement
Though I was the best companion

16. Spare me - may God spare you - any affliction
That makes my skin like a collapsing cliff

17. Others can avert their eyes from it
But it returns their wandering gaze

18. Calamities befell me early on and I remain
Between claws and talons ever since

19. Worries befriended me, distracting my resolve
While fate persisted as my companion

20. The world descended upon its kings
And I was tossed between springs and summits

21. I came to know the inner secrets of people
The pitfalls that ruin the heedless and save the wakeful

22. I listened until I hated my hearing
I saw until I hated my sight

23. The eye offends the seeing, and sometimes
The blind are safe when the sighted stumble

24. O you, absent when affection comes to mind
Alas! May God protect you from present harm

25. There are souls the noble pass with averted faces
Yet to gawking eyes seem uncouth strangers

26. Every frowning sneak, when you greet
Then turn, titters with pursed lips

27. By what right do pretenders and their efforts claim
Mouthing falsehoods, the weakest defenders

28. Can the fool attain the heights
With a conceited heart and foolish talk?

29. Or assume the station he envies is gained
By the favor of an absent beloved?

30. No, the veil has lifted, and perception
Is veiled for people by a barrier

31. Thus ignorance hides some of itself
Excuse if noble deeds are obscured

32. With my beloved, whose image always
Dwells with me, conversing in the darkness

33. His talents came before me, and his gentleness,
Always surpassing in every evident merit

34. Tribulations stunned my mind with their advent
Though it remained conscious of my bewilderment

35. I knew my shortcoming, not rejecting it
And his superiority, not denying it

36. Owed debts I hold with him, the finest
Of my inheritance and treasures

37. Those covenants remain, and his loyalty
Is the best bond I have

38. The eminent, noble pole whose hands
Hold superiority without rival

39. Refined manners relating the blossoms of meadows
And fine qualities gentle as a soft breeze

40. And virtues reciting eulogies that for
The envious are like Sura al-Fatir

41. When his pen flows I see the insights
Of an astute and keen observer

42. Melodies poured forth from his prolific quatrains
Like the rhythm of a song beneath a cover

43. And his conclusive chapters are like
Fragments of pearls, explicated by gems

44. Many a maiden's image I've placed
In my heart, though she belongs to another's gaze

45. The eloquence of nomads met, articulating
The insight of nomad and sophisticate alike

46. She smiled and when I saw it, I believed it
The smile of buds blooming from a radiant cheek

47. She recounted his words, and I found the feelings
Of one reminiscing on a fleeting past

48. O distant one, when has your memory
Ever departed and left my heart a bird in flight?

49. You have a pact with me, and if we seldom meet
It lasts through time and its procession

50. This is my newest covenant, and I keep it
And God is the best overseer of both our hearts