1. Behind the ribs of clouds a longing heart
For lightning that flashes with two flashes

2. It looked like a child teasing the clouds, but in truth
It passed around the horizons like a cup of wine

3. So O you who saw my origin noble and my passion
Clouds, while my heart flutters with lightning

4. Behold and wonder at me, though I am but one
In whom a beloved combines the traits of a group

5. And who would lightning complain of that wounds its horizon
With a wound like the wound of love, never healing

6. I sat amongst refined, cultured youths
Who give the highest esteem to culture

7. From them mouths poured forth meanings
As hands flow freely in cups of wine

8. They said to me, make a metaphor, so I said it was as though
A amber tail dragged over camphor

9. They insisted I make a metaphor, so I said it was as though
Pearls poured onto crystal a rejected draft

10. And if repetition were seemly, I would have said it was as though
Behind the ribs of clouds a longing heart

11. So they said, we wanted quickness and fervor
I said, you recalled the mind of Ibn Hariq

12. The gleam of lightning can be made more beautiful
By comparing it, enhancing its brilliance

13. And the sign of heavenly lightning is the pouring of its tears
In a valley plain or elevated meadow

14. That stars may shine in the darkness of branches
Flowers that dazzle the eye with the gleam of dawn

15. And the sign of that outstanding mind is an exhalation
That closes over minds every path

16. It is beauty, not what makes a garden teem
With a rose cheek or split pomegranate

17. It desires well crafted lines
To every deep crevice in rhetoric

18. It moves behind hearing in every woven song
To the settled place in the heart set out first

19. I say this having imbibed some of its drafts
And woken not fully conscious between drinks

20. Oh page of ink, its shoe has tread on you
So excel, O summit of rhetoric, excel me!

21. And O you who handled it, rest your place
Below it how many gentle winds and aged!

22. It pleases me that I stayed back from it
As a branch lags behind its origin branch

23. And it gladdened me that its envious left it
Like moths fluttering around an origin flame

24. Its arrows shot the heart of the envious one
With sharp heads like the arrows of archers

25. And it avails him not to line up shields, rather
Against arrows of thought only pliant coats help

26. It flooded my hearing with five poetic meters
And so meaning in my mind found harbor

27. With five verses complete in their prohibition
To a lineage the morning air made fragrant

28. With them you extended to me a hand of friendship
And affection binding like Al-Mashrafi's chest

29. A handshake for what we have of continuous thought
Yearning for the rewards of rhetoric and excelling

30. You are my brother, not what my heir imagined
So many a friend above every born brother

31. Come, I will converse with you intimately
In an age that warrants reproach and suitability

32. With the sign that sets and rises, he disobeys me
If I reckon with him for disobedience, he will know

33. But he has in a barren land the worst example
When he scorned in ignorance the merit of the ancient

34. If I sought to rise he lowered me with his wind
To every place of submission precipitous

35. We love the daughters of thought though they disobey us
So how can I accept as a friend my enemy?

36. And she was defiant and did not return to us with gain
Evil is the lamb in the clothes of the obedient

37. Enough slippery slope for fate that our meeting
Was like the non-existence of the disobedient