1. Can solace make passionate love forsake its ardour
When medicine claims that love will wear one down?

2. I yearn for Ghouta, abode of my folk, which delights me
Despite my poverty, its songs make me rich

3. I pine for a draught from Jawsaq’s water
And a look that beholds the Golan in its sights

4. And a breeze of the pure zephyr of Lebanon
That either kills my soul’s malady or heals it

5. O Time, the heedlessness of life does not return
Nor does the youth I wasted in it

6. And a wound lies hidden in the pupil of my eye
In it, each day, a tear pricks and sears

7. It turns to the people of Jeroun, so the Euphrates’ water spreads for it
And more than water quenches its thirst

8. May the swords take vengeance for my wishes
Since I am content with whatever its rhymes decree

9. If you prevent Saad from his wants
You cannot prevent Saad from wishing

10. For God, the melody of strings and a voice
Have stayed up at night betraying my longing in their songs

11. And coffee like the radiance of the rising sun
I wasted in it the saliva of its pourer

12. O, the pleasure I deflect with destiny’s right hand
Into its breast, though it draws me from my guts

13. If it but knew I deceived it for your sake
It would bend its fingers back at me when I bent them

14. How can misfortunes target me with their arrows
When the keen-eyed huntress’s gaze contents them?

15. If in life I submit to any misfortune
I submit to being estranged from you or being brought nearer by you

16. My eyes relish tears in loving you
As though the eyes sucked them right out of themselves

17. I swore by al-‘Isa to fully take my due from it
And by the pilgrims to God’s house to gift it to you

18. Indeed, I will thank—but my thanks for favours
Are not equal to those Muhammad ibn Mu‘izz bestows

19. Were it not for your dignity, crown of the kingdom, its
Foundations would have collapsed and its pillars crumbled

20. In a state whose swords are more decisive than yours
In ferocity, and whose name is more splendid than its names

21. Its racers galloped to the farthest limit
So you came first while glory followed

22. Indeed, the subjects never cease to harbour
Love for you, displaying it and hiding it

23. When they wish, they wish to live on for your sake
O Rider of the Throne, bless their wishes!

24. You uncovered it when the veil of darkness befell it
And the far and near attained your sustenance

25. Where suspicions run rife and earth remains
And the longed-for horizon’s rising tells it:

26. A youth will rule over us, sage in politics
So no affairs are lost while you govern them

27. To God, a vow upon us the day you rule us
And blessing and rights we cannot fulfil

28. And a banner for you God would spread
And in your presence Shashankir would fold

29. Days whose invitation the Turks would steal
And whose words of misguidance they would echo

30. So I never regretted anything past as I regret
That Hanzala the excited did not taste its thickness

31. You slipped your resolve and extracted its treasures
So your resolve was firmer than its terrain

32. The shaken one’s banner at the Iwan
Was fate while you at Sabat finished its water-carriers

33. Were it not for your stance at the river that day, it would have cracked
Cracked like glass that exhausts those who mend it

34. You stood at the western horizon, barring
The stances of lions who pay no heed to their grazing lands

35. In an hour when the horses’ reins were shortened
I aided them only with their lead ropes

36. The spear amongst them will not lack one who breaks it
And none answers its caller but the sword

37. You knew the right hand of forgiveness would save it
When you saw the left hand of rage take it captive

38. And a balance in which thunder roared, restraining
The branches of lightning, and its lofty pillars collapsed

39. Those possessions whose hopes you deferred
And whose wishes for help you did not disappoint

40. It had been a shadow for you—when its neighbors died
And a grove—when its nights were confined

41. Until you competed in cutting down its tamarisk trees
Oh what enmities time brought about between you!

42. Oh what flawless opinions, were reconciliation possible
In this world, you would mend in it!

43. If the bestower deprives it of the radiant favour
He has only taken away its gifts

44. Do not take the honor of your people in exchange
None will succeed you but one who succeeds it

45. The vile ones’ delight in you became desolation at night
While the womb of fools rebuilt it by night

46. Do not neglect the reason of Buwan’s clan—shoot it
While you suppose it with guesses in Wasit

47. And Wasit—each day its rising sun poured forth—
Flowing with fine swords in its valley

48. You met them at hopes, arriving
A brigade the glory will not misguide

49. Children of the maternal uncles—when their hands are provoked
They are your hands and your families are their families

50. Do not be ignorant of their patience though the dark wears them down
Nor their heroism though the white overcomes them

51. Protect it from the oft-said foolishness and beware for it
The ally’s right, matters you almost gave away

52. So I have not known matters you reject
Nor recalled rights you forgot

53. How can you leave it for the wolf to consume
When I see you protecting it from the hyenas?

54. Take it: when it is sung among the tribe in rapture
Its chests were known by the rhymes flowing from them

55. For it the rider forgets his destination
And the angry envious wakes up strewing it