1. I chide longing in them though it flares,
And deem my tears restrainable while they flow.

2. By God, how many suns among them have set
With loss, and homes demure they drew together!

3. The white ones tell of them glittering
That they are a bliss beyond which lies woe.

4. They gave our greeting despite trepidation
A salutation the lote-tree and wild thyme returned.

5. They are the gazelles, and I have a preserve of their vale,
And they are healing, and I have sickness from their glance.

6. Watering lovers among the fevered is kindness,
And watering them from their lids everlasting.

7. Nothing in a house of their loss
Has authority but tears adjudicate.

8. To what the deer in a terrain of peace have done, submit:
When it harbors the wayside booth, peace and the booth spend the night

9. Side by side, and dawn reveals meaning and the tent.
You came pouring down lightning, bringing thunder,

10. Smiling at times, at times frosty.
As if along with the south winds they eschew you,

11. A sea blocking the sky’s expanse, turbulent,
Of those at whose smiles earth says that through them,

12. This life by which the zephyr lives is possible,
As if, when they turned away to leave,

13. The ranks of the foe turned in defeat,
Their protectors’ cheeks turned upwards

14. As if their good news raised the redness.
They bolted, and the white hands of Ibn ‘Abdallah’s descendants appealed to them

15. Like birds a sudden lightning has terrified.
With valor and resolve you quenched their fire

16. When before it was consuming Islam.
With well-honed swords you drove them from a land

17. Spacious your torrents coursed in it.
So their insolence this day is beyond the sea

18. While bereft of the white hands, they are nations.
With spears between which and their extremities

19. Is no weak spot, you overwhelmed them.
And you attained their strongest fortress and most distant,

20. So no pact will protect them from your might.
The commander among them has been gripped

21. By fear of your disturbing imamate’s encroachment,
In his breast by missives terrified—and terror

22. Of doom and hope of peace are promiscuous in him.
He drinks water only with a gulp of dread

23. And slumbers only when prudence seizes him.
God is your ally, the spears your neighbors,

24. And the white hands seize every color of banners,
While the streamers of darkness still eyes in its gloom,

25. And the upright and shining ones throng like the spearpoints of a sun.
Through your help, Islam now has one fast in his refuge,

26. While you in God and the Indian are sheltered.
You hurl the spear whose deathblows therein crouch,

27. So disbelief you shatter on occasion and it shatters.
Marvel how when it summons him to battle

28. Deaf he is—no call makes an impression on him!
As if along with its lofty dunes, its battlefield brims

29. With pens—for spears, special preserves therein.
So the raid proceeds orderly and the spoils divided

30. While the religion smiles and paganism is subdued.
O questioner, ask of Ali, what his traits were:

31. Look to gratitude joined in him with favors!
A praise that makes Zuhair avert his eyes

32. And a gainer that peaks of glory near him decline.
A bestower who frees with honor his hands

33. Who at times enriches through bounty, at times through vengeance.
A shearer, like God’s house, whom the Arabs and non-Arabs recognize

34. Through the overwhelming merits voiced of him.
If dawn gleams, it is the rising sun,

35. And if night falls, it is the lamp and the standard.
No encomiast lends him an attribute,

36. Nor do they say of him other than what they knew.
He saw magnanimity as a strong, towering quality, so he aspired to it,

37. And the best of them is he who saw him when he came of age.
Openhanded to his hopeful ones in the shade of his mercy

38. Though neither blood kin nor womb-kin exist between them.
His hands encompass when vitality encompasses a land—

39. For those that encompass the world are bounty.
We care not, when we profit through his rainwater,

40. Whether the rain withholds or whether the ponds dry up.
He is life and riches however his aspect changes,

41. And he is loss however the sword and end rebuff.
He cast the cross and the cross’ sons, and they were not

42. Sheathed, his blades, but they were shattered.
In scabbards the blades deny them sheathed

43. While the hilts—deserts and thickets recognize them bared.
Bound round their waists, his apologetic airs are not removed,

44. Nor are their burdens eased from their middles.
As if created for war, saddled

45. Were his steeds frothing at the bit.
O defender of the faith, the faith is held secure

46. By your palms with a bond no rending frays.
I apprehend your pardon, knowing well

47. Those natural dispositions of pride and forbearance will unfold upon me.
My turning away was a crime with no atonement in my eyes,

48. And what sensible being is there who does not sin?
An opinion went awry with a stumble

49. For which my feet slipped, and nothing but feet’s slipping makes opinion deviate.
It was a coercion that removed freewill, and does one

50. With mind elect what debases and what is resolute?
How can the thirsty one deliberately bypass his watering-place

51. If he goes, parched and arid?
Pardon, for were my heart split open from its page

52. Fear and regret would continue to be read therein.
To you they came like a necklace whose arranger

53. Does no good, though you have done good in what you recited and composed.
For poetry is like a garden, this part dark, that fresh,

54. Or like swords—this side keen, that side blunt.
Or like spear-hafts, this one’s lot a bending,

55. Disgraced, and that one’s portion bold and straight.