And We Remained Lovers

At al-Zahra I remembered you, full of longing,
while the horizon was clear and the face of the earth was fair,

and the breeze languished in its late afternoons,
as though it pitied me and fell ill out of compassion —

a day like the days of our pleasures now gone by,
when we passed the night as its thieves while time lay sleeping.

We took our delight in flowers that beguiled the eye,
through which the dew had wandered till their necks bowed down,

as if their eyes, beholding my sleeplessness,
wept for my plight, the tears welling and glistening.

A rose flashed bright in the sunlit reach of its bed,
and the forenoon grew more radiant in the eye because of it;

a fragrant water-lily breathed its perfume against it,
drowsy-eyed, its pupils wakened by the dawn.

Each thing stirs in us a memory of longing
for you, from which the breast, though it grew tight, cannot turn away.

May God grant no rest to a heart that ceases to remember you
and does not soar, beating, on the wing of longing!

Had the breath of the wind, when it stirred, consented to carry me,
it would have brought you a young man worn away by all he has met.

So now — I give praise for how faithful we were to your covenant:
you found consolation, and we remained lovers.