Sol 5.6

  1. What have I to do with Layla’s abode, that I should salute it,

    when its dwellings stand deserted by their beauties?

  2. Leave ruined abodes to those who are enamored of them,

    and devote yourself to a tavern whose cupbearer is like the full moon.

  3. What a gulf there is between a ruin whose landmarks lie desolate

    and a flourishing place that glories in those within it!

  4. Never! The house does not grieve me through its empty courtyard;

    a house grieves me only through the people who once dwelt there.

  5. So leave that theme, and turn to describing a beauty

    whose nightly visitations stole through my heart at Hulwan—

  6. lush and supple of figure: had the one who shared her bed

    feared prying eyes for her, he would almost have folded her away.

  7. The rapture of wine holds a secret drawn from her lips,

    and the arak tree bears a likeness to her graceful swaying.

  8. O what a night, when I lay drinking from her fingertips,

    from her glances wine, and from her mouth!

  9. I kept that night alive and put sleep to death, holding fast

    to a delight that time itself can scarcely make one forget—

  10. until, when the thread of dawn began to flutter, and the doves

    of the grove hastened to pour out their songs,

  11. she rose, swaying drunkenly within her wraps,

    while fright now drove her onward, now turned her back.

  12. She feared the daylight, though within her buttons was a moon

    that arrested the eye, bewildered along its courses.

  13. Then she turned away, while my hand was a fetter upon a waist

    like a bamboo cane, full and supple in its bending,

  14. with a fair radiance the eye could scarcely fail to know,

    and a dusky hue whose edges at times seemed translucent.

  15. At last I passed guards stationed watchfully on high,

    whose sentry’s cry nearly thwarted the soul’s desire.

  16. She stirred the rings of the door, and it opened

    upon a courtyard where her collarbones had made their home.

  17. Then I returned, my eye drowned in its tears,

    and my heart in an anguish whose pangs leapt within it.

  18. Ah, what a night it was! Through union with her it became

    the chronicle of a revel whose telling stirs the soul.

Sol 5.6