1. Are you from the youthfulness of al-Saba, my supporter,
Or are you in the grief of the excuser?

2. Alas! The healthy never pity the afflicted,
Nor does the swift ever stop for the stumbler.

3. O Allah, destroy those infatuated with love!
They plagued me when my conscience was tranquil.

4. They never left me until I turned to youthfulness
After being aloof with repulsion.

5. So I knew, when I poured out my passion, my resources,
But I did not know my origins.

6. I have nothing to do with the white, alluring maidens
With the affliction of separation that recalls the rememberer.

7. They made me grey-haired and blemished my parting grey hair,
Take it back to yourself as an issue from the unjust.

8. There is no welcome to grey hair that darkened my essence
When my appearance was adorned and shone.

9. Hair that refused me graciousness on the day of reproach
To accept my excuses.

10. Like roughness in the throat,
Or a speck residing in the eye.

11. I have no fault before the greying, and yet
I am taken to account after it for heinous sins.

12. O driver of the melancholic on the day of their being led,
Be gentle with a heart among the melancholic.

13. A body that lived with anguish, so its heart
After separation is in the claws of a bird.

14. What harm to you if you had stopped at the loved ones
In love among the open and the secretive?

15. And the enamored who denied love, so the tongue of pouring tears
Informed about him on the day of farewell.

16. And the rider of the she-camel on the day of departure, an absent one,
No use to me after him is the present.

17. More coveted to me than purpose is absence of purpose,
And more precious to me than my hearing and sight.

18. Disobedient to the slanderers, he visited me stealthily
At night after the withdrawal of the eyelids of the wakeful.

19. Hastiness that captures the conversation, as if it were
A jinn lying in wait for inattentiveness of the vigilant.

20. O rider finesse on the back of the she-camel in the morning
Among the chambers and the external.

21. Convey to the progeny of Khalaf that my friendship for them
Is intimate, and my means and ties.

22. You, even if kinship does not bring us close, with what
You have purified, my relatives and companions.

23. And my companions over men when calamities coil
Events that acquit the absent from the present.

24. Do not think I would change after you all,
For my beginnings in loving you are like my ends.

25. Do you remember? For I have not forgotten
That intimacy in time gone by.

26. When we in the land of ancestry were neighbors
In the shade of those days over there like peers.

27. How many among you with ascendant nobility
Or suppressor of nobility or subduer!

28. And you are raised up, your beauty raises you
Amongst men upon the backs of minbars.

29. They aspired to attain the heights and their clothes
Twist like interlaced and dotted.

30. O teacher, you have excelled, so generously
Say a word, so take from it the thanks of the grateful,

31. A word like the breeze blew gently on soil,
The scent of plants after a raining cloud.

32. It has reached like slumber knocking fastened
After weariness the eyelids of the wakeful.

33. I have none but the bestowal of a preventer
That tears out the wings or the visit of a departing one.

34. As if after the greying it gives me good tidings
Of the return of the flourishing days of youth.

35. And you went on describing to me the beauty of glorious deeds,
Were it not for your praise, I would have no glorious deeds.

36. So my eulogies vouched for by my eulogies
And my glories accumulated with my glories.

37. Do not fear from me weariness in passion
And fear the weariness of those you have met and bewared.

38. And know that I do not waver from she who
Has the abode in my soul a populated one.

39. And after you I have tested men’s morals
Bent, the insights of the experienced flee from them.

40. No pasture in them and no pleasance,
Like the mirage of a barren desert or broken glass.

41. They vie with one another for vileness among themselves
Like the dogs of wolves they saw the sterile’s vulva.

42. They did not rise to the East nor sought
To earn praise from them with claws.

43. And as if their neighbor residing among them
In an abode of wasteland and ruins.

44. So leave complaining of separation, for it has passed,
And take union openly with the open.

45. I am jealous of a time between us
That passes without company and discourse.