1. Let it bring you joy that my eyes do not sleep,
That I am consumed with passionate love for you,

2. That after you my heart has not settled down,
Its rapids have not calmed nor has passion cooled.

3. In less than a third of this I went mad,
So what if a year or two should pass?

4. A critic blames me for my passionate love,
Slow down, where is my hearing and who is to blame?

5. There is no hope for reconciliation like your affection,
Nor patience like being with you that can be endured.

6. How can I obey my blamer when I have concerns
That have kept me awake while they slept?

7. A fire was lit in the darkness here
And its embers burned in my liver.

8. I remembered the days of love and union,
A paradise for the young filled with passion.

9. In it beautiful faces create seasons of joy
And days in Kazima, though few,

10. Are like the days of Kazima, peace be upon her.
I called upon you, O doves of the mosque,

11. When were the tents removed from the valley?
And did the dynasties leave it with the passing of time

12. Calamities that no arrows can pierce?
Imagination makes me think it depicts him

13. Or a dream represents him.
So it sickened me with ailing eyelids

14. And swore it would not leave me in poor health.
It bent my waist just so

15. And with my hunch back it persisted.
Its steps shame the pacing of the wanton,

16. And from its glances the wine becomes intoxicated.
Its waist carries what the hands of Abi Nasr bore,

17. A young man whose hands yearn to give like the longing lover.
It has an aroma that emanates a fragrance

18. As the bouquets open from the meadow.
The mounts are drawn to it

19. As if its courtyard were the sacred land.
No gloom when the delegations have cast down their staffs,

20. Nor frowns in its square.
When its hands give generously, clouds pour forth unrestrained.

21. Which of them is the rain cloud cannot be known.
If its clouds withhold, still a downpour from its sources—

22. A cloud of treasures raining down.
It has bounty, valor, cultivation,

23. Vanquishing, pardon, and vengeance.
The night’s young ones fear its power,

24. While great misdeeds are small in its presence.
A protector whose neighbor is not wronged,

25. A shepherd whose flock is not threatened.
I entrusted the turns of my days, though unjust,

26. Forbidden and prohibited for the days.
The pillar of faith has become my neighbor

27. And the neighbor of the victorious cannot be wronged,
Of the people with faces that illuminate the darkness,

28. Whose habit is blades and lean frames
That when bared hungry souls are their only food.

29. They give generously and are ruthless—they are life
To those who hope in them and a sanctuary.

30. So say, O days, to the misers about me:
“I have forbidden myself what the vile bestow.”

31. If you neglect my hopes and so
Obstacles arise that no bridle can gently curb,

32. And war horses whose reins cannot control,
Then I will guard rhyme from men

33. Whose praise in them is shameful and condemnable,
And visit with it the sanctuary of a noble king—

34. The generous are stingy when the noble mention him.
So neither missing at the shooting range when we shoot

35. With its straight flight, nor crookedness.
You established a market for morals and manners

36. While with others they cannot be established.
So take my praise according to my capacity,

37. For your sublimity is beyond envisioning.
Praise of you the likes of which was not praised in the past—

38. Not al-Walid nor Hisham.