1. I guard her from strangers not out of avoidance
And I blame her so she contends with blame

2. And I distance the fear of slanderers from her
That I may grow closer in love and approach

3. My tears refuse but to pour down
My agony refuses but to blaze

4. We passed al-’Uqayq, so how much ’Uqayq
Trickled down our cheeks, melting

5. From a refuge we made yearning wherein
A question and tears its answer

6. In the dunes that have lost suns
When the darkness of night falls witness

7. I carried for them the burdens of trysts
And carried from al-Sulwān no blame

8. Were the domes of your abode an arrow shot
Away we would greet the domes

9. We block ‘Udhayb even having seen
On the thirst of your sands torment

10. Zigzag lightning reminds me of the undulations
On the bends of Dijla and the canyons

11. Days I knew trysts in and lands I accompanied in youth
I see no use residing in a place

12. That harbors strangenesses of praise and estrangement
Dew preoccupied minds therein

13. And they to arrange words were bent
Gardens, whenever watered by a cloud

14. By Saif al-Dawla’s sword hope for a cloud
Capacious-bosomed, he brings down his hopes

15. From the heavens, the most expansive
A rebutting poet kindles passion

16. Or pours it out copiously
They meet the coolness of his hands in their eagerness

17. Be they eager or otherwise
When his swords pillage lands

18. His virtues return the pillaging
A nursling of war, when he hauls the fortunes

19. To calamity, therein he tends and curbs
He courted it with junior speech until

20. He darkened its plains, piercing and darkening
It deems the basin of its immersion a torment

21. If a people deem it torment
O sons of the cross, have there contacted you

22. Arrows that scatter the resolve and determination
If wheeling overhead a hawk of the army

23. Then expect requital
And if the tax strips its repositories

24. Of the two darics await the blows
Winter has denied you its warmth

25. And it war therein and skirmishes
God will be satisfied by one wrathful against you

26. Who leads against you the furious lions
Worthy, when accompanied by triumphs

27. That the aspirations accompany him not
He tossed about in the lands of Rome until

28. He overturned their thrones therein
As if when the air passed through it

29. He prolonged against them meteorites from it
The crooked spear did not curve until

30. He led with all it encompassed crookedness
And the day of Balqamūsh as if a lightning flash

31. Gleamed thereby cloven for him and clove
You rose for him while the sea of death rose

32. So when you crossed distress left
With falsehood you warded from the inviolable of God—ennobler!

33. No opportunity was left for the slanderous
You submitted to the egg of Islam, shooting

34. Its shots binding pact and constitution
And there returned to you your feast whatever

35. The brow of the sun hid or tore the veil
Take it like the kindling of ember, it suffices

36. Over the lamp in night, kindlings
Gleaming as if natural disposition cast

37. Onto its pages gold melted
The weary of thought wheels round it

38. And kneels before its limits, pouring himself out
Just so the glance, if one day it is threaded

39. It enters the dust of lashes, confused