1. The epochs told of her neck's graces,
The stars recounted her beauty at dawn,

2. Her cheek's musk regaled us
With a tale the night retold from the full moon's splendor,

3. And her lips combined the letters
To words her cup's wine relayed from raindrops,

4. With my body's health her words' sickness
Which the musk transmitted on its authority the news of dispersal,

5. With her cheek a rose, Moses' fire brandishing a platter,
And the water of life from her eye a draft of greenness,

6. My excuse, from an innocent maiden before my talismans
I bestowed upon her my excuse, enamored as I was in her love,

7. I have a teardrop in my love for her that if shed by a serpent
Ruby would grow in the oyster's shell,

8. I have pledged my soul to her, tormented among the tresses
And the neck of a gazelle having donned the live coal,

9. She robbed the epochs of nights,
Were they not so lengthy, I'd have said, "From my life!"

10. Behold the swords unsheathed for her cheeks by which
A scabbard is stripped and sheathed in sorcery,

11. And the ringlets their arrows drink whose poison is her kohl,
Thus they melt with the thorns of bees from the honeyed lip,

12. And the heart’s silence that from her wrists it gagged,
Its whispering devil breathes into my breast,

13. In my heart from me is agony that if it festers
The woeful became its drops embers of coal,

14. She's inaccessible but to the blind, none visit her,
And from the dream's specter she's veiled if it goes,

15. The collar of youth whose crescent accompanies dawn
Below the sun in the dusk of hair,

16. When the notion of her union goes through the mind
I see death's steeds stumbling into the thought,

17. Of lofty lineage whose aura is the full moon's light
And the rainbow's arc is the circle of her veil,

18. Beneath her one sees the Milky Way though in the darkness
Flowing on the riverbed of star pebbles it winds,

19. So her tresses are litters for the sprawling twilight
And her braids in the dark night's wings,

20. As if on us swooping with the starry spearheads
Are nights whose shooting stars in their wands brandish,

21. I mounted the waves of life’s steed and delved in
The seas of death seeking the pearl of existence,

22. And met from it the barrenness of desolation safely
And was greeted from it in ruin a palace doll,

23. When from us farewell approached and we embraced
The shirt of parting we wove with the fabric of patience,

24. She wept silver tears from slumbering narcissi
And I shed sobs of carnelian, oh my night vigil!

25. Thus became the full moons in dawn’s dusk
Pouring, and the daytime sun's eye by the stars of flowers,

26. I got up with the lion's might belted around me
And the doe's hand had clasped my waist,

27. When about what's in me she almost melted her bracelet
Into my ribs though they are made of solid rock,

28. When about her uniqueness her necklace almost melted
And flowed like tears though she knew it not,

29. May God water the globes of carnelian with lightning
That cuts through the inky night with shafts of amber,

30. Ever ablaze the braziers of anemones
Wherein the fires of ruby flame in wands of sparks,

31. A sanctuary whose lions repose while drowsing
And their eyes make the antelopes swoon,

32. The gazelles orbit their moons in a halo
And protect the white stars in the brown stars,

33. Would that I lived in times gone by and nights
When brides of company smiled sans any scowl,

34. While our days are strange, as if their steeds
Are the hands of Ali upon the epochs' necks,

35. Hands beyond metaphor they are indeed, though they toyed with my mind,
Sorceresses who recited incantations and cast a spell,

36. Valleys where glory is weighed against stars,
Ravines for one journeying to the place of ease,

37. Terrains training the heights, peaks steadfast
Where virtues triumph over destitution,

38. With his hands he germinated its growths
So the fruits of his bounty in the crop of gratitude thrived,

39. The peerless unique one who unites the dual
And from him issues the apportioning of compulsion and choice,

40. His works are a necklace on the neck of loftiness
And his favors are a crown on the head of pride,

41. A springtime, when you visit it you see a meadow
Wherein his integrity buds the blossoms,

42. In it longing for a nature that is as if
It blows upon us in the love breeze gently,

43. O you reaching the seas' depths, be content with him
For their seventh is in the fold of his ten fingers,

44. When his white hand brings it out moistened by the dew
Then woe to the mother of all white and yellow leaves!

45. The brother of ambitions immense whom a coat of mail embraces
And how odd that the sea in the pot is drowned!

46. The brown spears, as they are staffs, in his grip
Tremble like the green leaves without any doubt,

47. So many homes with his sermons he shoots
Making them and their prose like speeches of poetry,

48. By God, the day of Khark when he took his stance at noon
And the bedouins flowed with stained swords,

49. They came stretching out necks vying in height
Thus they became, and the outstretched of them, bent,

50. They attacked him with a war whose legs, whenever erect,
The deaths galloped in hearts terrified,

51. It peddles in its market the sale of wishes
With the currency of souls overpriced to whoever buys,

52. Assailing amidst like lions proceeding with cubs
Who see the supporter of war in the image of the young maid,

53. And knights of death who to the fray advance
When the battle's lion roars and steps forward,

54. And steeds whose trot spurs them as if they
Fly when the partridge's wings flutter and flap,

55. So he married the gazelles' bucks to their souls
And endowed them, smiting iron without dowry,

56. The beasts of the land from the blood he shed
Became like whales in the sea's swelling tides,

57. From their resolve he built pulpits and minarets
Where the eagle's monk took his mosque and resided,

58. They found him preying as eagles swift and nimble
And turned tail as eagles turn from the falcon,

59. Some had fallen on the ground in the snare of doom
And some took flight from it on the wings of fright,

60. Whence for them soldiers to meet his legions?
And whence the bamboo spears against the myrtle spear?

61. They sought, so he sought them with that which if
The meteors had deliberately met, they'd have met their demise,

62. Showing from the bloody palm were his fingers
And from it the span of the forearm was too short for the inch,

63. Their pharaohs devised against him and he schemed against them
And the Mighty deemed your resting place best from victory,

64. They hoped to ruin with them some merchandise
So the Shepherd of ruin led them to loss,

65. A victory whose honored aid lets down the enemies
And opens what had been shut of the matter,

66. Your palm sufficing to hold back death from them
And their submission from captivity suffices them,

67. Lo, then pardon them for they are your slaves
And the markers of forgiveness are of the noble traits,

68. O son of God's Messenger and the master whose bosom
Contains the celebrity sublime of the time's esteem!

69. The quarrelers plotted against you and you plotted against them
And He honored your abode mightily with triumph,

70. They sought to abase with them a commodity
So He Who shepherds the ruined led them to loss,