1. Neither the flower blossoms of your life,
Nor the smiles of its springs that have turned treacherous,

2. Nor have their gazes grazed,
In a garden whose radiance arrows have pierced.

3. Restrain yourselves! For passion is an arena,
Wherein reward and spoils are forfeited.

4. Our interpretation is that,
What is forbidden to the desperate becomes permissible.

5. Indeed the verses of souls,
Whose sweetness the greatest misfortune exceeded,

6. Their plunge in the depths of passion,
Is because precious blood in them is scarce.

7. Who claimed the eyes of the fascinated,
That what they covet goes unpunished?

8. They took my heart without my body, so
Neither skin nor bone avails me.

9. They made my injustice sweet, so for them,
I seek God's forgiveness for the unjust.

10. No harm if they had journeyed until
My excuse for them blame could parry.

11. The fairest among them said to me,
“Therein neither wages nor sin lies.”

12. I said, “He who inflicted this malady,
And He who cures it, knows.”

13. How many gazelles are in the desert tents,
Whose bracelets a forearm would suffice?

14. They avoided eyes so they go unseen,
And feared hearing so they make no sound.

15. Had she contended with the moon at night,
Merit would judge in her favor.

16. For she had seduced her people,
While stars were not infatuated with the moon.

17. How difficult is the ear’s access,
To an abode whose knock is a sword and club!

18. The branded one did not cease roaming their land,
Nor did the ostrich flee their air.

19. Or the dunes were seen to have cast
A shadow, as the garment of a pilgrim.

20. And God fulfilled the goal, so some lads
Whose morning companion regrets not.

21. I gave them a blond from my home,
They said, “Where is the morning draught and dried meat?”

22. They excused, had their mounts sought them out,
Their guard would have stabled and fed them.

23. Yet she in her dignity amongst them,
The ransom is rejected and the twin refused.

24. The cooking pots do not cease, inhabited by them,
And the fires of turmoil are stoked.

25. A drink for them, if only their mothers
Were not fed bitter grief or go barren.

26. The pregnant one wishes that one day,
She would equal them in childbirth.

27. So I do not know if a noble line they begot,
Or a combative clan inherited them.

28. Nay, from the chieftain of leaders they acquired
Virtues, not from their lineage.

29. If you ask the sublime ones about themselves,
Relay what Abul Qasim has taught me.

30. Revelation sent down a chapter about him,
Whose meanings are subtle and not grasped.

31. As if in the heart of his anthology,
David in his sanctuary decrees.

32. An eloquence whose clarity in explanation,
Makes verse neither obscure nor foreign.

33. The summary is that his scroll be circulated,
And the slumbering soul awakens.

34. When his thoughts challenge the unknown,
No door to them remains obscured.

35. Enough O clouds, cease aggregation,
The flow of the land suffices the aged torrent.

36. The herbage and guest of villages have known,
Which of them in crisis is most generous.

37. Ascend O plateaus of wishes,
For he is the ladder to your summit.

38. Envied are his pens that in his hands
Are spear and picker.

39. That which unites them is no unifier,
These two are my misery and those two my bliss.

40. He has no need for a whetstone,
His weapon from himself is sharp.

41. Verily the kindling of the source is purification,
Not for he whose arrowhead is lead.

42. And when he shook his cunning’s bow,
The learned hero tore into it.

43. And the shield said to its polished face,
“Naught shook but predetermined fate.”

44. The misfortunes of time are not to be avoided,
And its highest view for them a salve.

45. If you desire, his horses can prepare
A feast witnessed by the night prowler.

46. Their colors were dyed with indigo,
The gray and the black confused.

47. From a house whose glory,
Infidel and Muslim both visit.

48. Circling its pillars, its guests
Praised them, as they granted bounty.

49. Built by kindness, its edifice,
While all other houses crumble.

50. Delegations throng its corners,
So its year in full is a season.

51. If apparatus carved its stone,
Zamzam would be extracted from its soil.

52. O seal of the generous, my saying by which
The chosen words are concluded.

53. By the full moon of your attributes I am sustained,
So why can I not compose poetry?

54. New Year greetings are obligatory,
By what the destitute possesses.

55. It is gifted to your like, though neither dinar,
Nor dirham, only verse.