1. Your white palm is a lily, and its scent
Wafts into my palm, so I inhale,

2. Is it jasmine and roses in a garden, or
In a bud, a tulip flower with its leaves?

3. It is like velvet adorned with pearls,
Or the light of the full moon in a sleepless night,

4. Or a bouquet that gathers flowers, tied up
Like an embroidered heart when it is anxious,

5. And on its fingers are diamonds like dewdrops
On branches stroked by the passing breeze,

6. Those fingers are like crystal, pure,
Water seems to flow from them in a stream,

7. And like pearls and coral are its tips,
No necklace can match it around the neck,

8. The whiteness and redness of your palm
Are like a summer sky at sunset,

9. You placed it on a waist whose stream flowed
In an agitated sea fearing to drown,

10. So I said, would that my palm have what yours has
Of a slim waist that made me long for it,

11. It would then in its weakness have a support,
For the beads are from its belt undone,

12. Your palm seems to be playing the strings
Like a bird’s wing fluttering in the garden,

13. When I asked to revive it with a kiss
You replied, from the intense breath aflame,

14. So I said, I will shed my tears to cool it down,
And if they dry up, the eyelids will drip,