1. Alone or in a group of six in solitude
Our night tied with yearning

2. As if shrouded daughters in their darkness
Travelers' tents in mourning

3. I think of confronting fate
With cavalry whose advance the valleys fuel

4. My will set on the narrow path
By shedding the blood of cities and wilds

5. How long this lagging and procrastination
And how long this persistence in persistence

6. And the soul's preoccupation from seeking glory
By selling poetry in a stagnant market

7. Neither my past youth can be regained
Nor a day that's passed retrieved

8. When my eyes glimpsed the whiteness of old age
It found it among the blackness

9. When after transcendence I increased
My decrease occurred in my increase

10. Shall I be content to live without repaying
The prince for his great favors

11. May God reward well the journey toward him
Though he left horses like the stalls

12. So Ibn Ibrahim did not meet me
With a day's ration for locusts

13. Was there not a distant land between us
That made its length the width of proximity

14. And made our nearness like remoteness
And our closeness like distance

15. Yet when I came to him at my utmost
He seated me atop the fierce lions

16. He gleamed before I greeted him
Casting his wealth before the pillows

17. We blame you, O Ali, though guiltless
Because you were kind to people

18. And you do not bestow on a steed
Your gifts for it to be called generous

19. As if Islam fears your munificence
Lest it end in apostasy

20. As if the shields in coats of mail are eyes
With your swords molded from sheaths

21. You have attuned tongues from anxieties
So naught occurs to them but hearts

22. The day you summoned them, forelocks disheveled
Tied in plaits for pursuit

23. And ruin befell a people
Who in Al Ladhiqiyah tyrannized

24. So the West was a sea of waters
And the East a sea of steeds

25. Over which your banners fluttered
Tossing in white mourning

26. They met you with camel livers, the white-eyed,
So you quenched them, the sword's edge sharp

27. You tore the garb of error off them
And clothed them in guidance

28. Thus they did not leave authority by choice
Or feign your affection out of affection

29. Nor fall in ascetic disdain of glory
Or yield happily in yielding

30. Rather, your fear blew through their insides
Like the wind in a locust's leg

31. And they died before their deaths, so when
You pardoned, you revived them before the Return

32. You sheathed blades which, had they not repented,
Would have erased them like erasure

33. For passing fury, though intense,
Is not half your enduring nobility

34. Let not tongues of partisans deceive you
Their hearts foes though they be friends

35. Be like death, heeding no mourner
Who weeps from it, though it is unfeeling

36. For the wound surely heals after a time
If the building's based on ruin

37. And water flows even from solidity
And fire comes even from flint

38. How can a coward sleep at ease
When you line his side with prickly chaff

39. Seeing your spear in both his dreams
Fearing he'll see it while awake

40. You ordered Abu al-Husayn with praise of folk
Amongst whom I arrived without provision

41. And they thought I'd praised them long ago
While you were my purpose in praising them

42. I shall leave you the day after tomorrow
My heart leaves not your courtyard

43. Loving you wherever my mount takes me
Your guest wherever in the lands I was