It is a marvel indeed that I should pine for them,
while they dwell within my heart, my soul, my very life (1).
I remembered—and their time of closeness has never slipped my mind—
how could I forget the nights in al-ʿAqīq now past (2)?
[ق 160]
The dwellings of my loved ones, the seats of my lords,
the horizons where my moons arose, where my crescents first shone,
are the trysting-places of my joy, the homelands of my bliss,
the seasons of my profits, the very hours of my delight.
They have slipped away from me, gone as though I had never known them,
and that is only because heedlessness kept overtaking me (3).
If no lightning flashes to me from their quarter,
then woe to my striving, and how long my misery!
If I do not spend my life beneath their tents,
I have not lived in this world, nor attained my hope.
If I do not behold their beauty with my own eyes,
my longing is lost and I shall die of regret.
By the truth of their favors, by the splendor of their beauty,
and by my utter submission and abasement in their love (4),
for anything short of their good pleasure my ambitions have never aspired,
nor have my glances ever turned to any besides them.
(1) MSS F, K, and T read: “wa-qad sakanū” (and they have settled).
(2) MSS F, K, and T read: “bi-l-ʿudhīb”; a marginal note in K preserves the reading adopted in the present edition.
(3) After this verse, MSS F, K, and T add the couplet:
“uʿallilu ruḥī bi-l-ghuwayri wa bānatin,
wa mā shawquhā illā li-sukkān Rāmah”
(I soothe my soul with al-Ghuwayr and a bana tree, yet its longing is only for the dwellers of Rama).
(4) The present verse is absent from F and K. After it, MSS F, K, and T record the following lines:
“wa in lam ajid nūra l-hudā fī khibāʾihim
yuḍīʾu bihi qalbī, fayā ʿiẓma ḥayratī;
yaqūlūna lī: lima lā salawta hawāhum?
faqultu: daʿūnī, mā bulītum bimiḥnatī.
walā dhuqtum mā dhāqa qalbī mina l-jawā,
walā massakum ḍurrī, wa nārī wa ḥurqatī;
fahal lī janān an yahumma bighayrihim,
wa hal lī lisān an yafūha bisalwatī.”
(If I cannot find the light of guidance in their encampment to illumine my heart, how great my bewilderment! They say to me, “Why have you not forsaken your love for them?” I reply, “Leave me be; you have not been tried by my ordeal. You have not tasted what my heart has tasted of yearning, nor have my affliction, my fire, and my burning touched you. Can my heart ever turn toward anyone but them, or my tongue utter words of indifference?”)
The line beginning “li-ghayr riḍāhum …” is not found in F.