1. By your soul, O Sulayma, what ails my heart,

    that it throbs at every moment?

  2. Most of all when a north wind blows

    upon it, or lightning flashes from that quarter.

  3. Is it longing for you that has bound me in fetters?

    Then I rejoiced, while the tears of my eyelids ran free.

  4. I have shouldered the burden of your love, O Sulayma,

    even if you make me bear what I cannot endure.

  5. Your passion possesses me—for every free man

    is a slave to the one he loves, O Salma.

  6. What amazes me most is that I am drowning

    in tears, yet from them a fire burns within my heart.

  7. I never loosed the gathered host of tears except

    on the morning of parting, when the company departed.

  8. I poured out the eyes’ blood when their mounts

    set forth—and what an abundance of blood I poured!

  9. Might a phantom visit us by night,

    and that nocturnal phantom frolic in our presence?

  10. And did the life-giving rain fall there in torrents by night,

    so that the lovely meadow grew lush with grass?

  11. And did the daisies smile upon its hills,

    while the red anemone dyed its cheek there?

  12. For indeed, nights once passed for us there

    when, drunk with wine, we never sobered.

Sol 5.6