1. I intentionally forgot you as if I had bid you farewell
And some intentional forgetting is a form of affection

2. When the darkness of disloyalty intensifies, your virtues shine
Igniting the fire of your kindness in me

3. My equals forget - alas - what wrongs I have committed
Against the confused wanderer in the valley of roses

4. Do I fear my punisher, so I hide my torment?
Do you think I'm a youth awakened from rapture?

5. My passion for you left no heart without longing
And my love for you left no eye without wakefulness

6. I shed on you my infatuation and youth
Strands never shed on the dwellers of eternity

7. What has passed is gone, will time bring back what has passed?
And will you avoid past love or covenant?

8. In modern Egypt covenants have become
Lines of sorrow I guard and keep alone

9. I roam them together as was our custom
And the custom of passion is sweeter than honey

10. I read them letter by letter as if they were
Letters from the sick Laila or Hind

11. Come, let's count her tender nights as reckoning
For a love whose soul you seized while in the cradle

12. Come, come before passion becomes
Histories that neither please the lover nor avail

13. Come, for who has shed light like your light
And you will not enjoy the paradise of love after me

14. Come, for in modern Egypt what it contains
Of sleepy narcissus, clover and roses

15. My dreams' harbor, my ambitions' desire
And my soul's familiar in blame and praise

16. When the killer instincts lurk in it, I hand over
Its keys whether concealed or revealed

17. And if I'm absent from it a night, it turns
Questioning the secret of estrangement and rejection

18. Its streets are for every lover on promise
Passages from a beloved to a beloved

19. Its breaths at night are like musk's breath
And its darkness like a mole on a cheek

20. So do not mention Najd or Khayf after it
Its songs transcend Khayf and Najd

21. And do not seek an equal in its beauty
For the sun's beauty has no equal among stars

22. Its Paris or Berlin contain its charm
When it blooms in beauty like the fortunate star

23. Does London resemble it in its graces
When spirits are filtered troop after troop?

24. Beauty gathers in it from every nation
Like Baghdad between Arabs, Persians and Kurds

25. And strange breaths rise in it
Of roses, basil, missteps, and censure

26. The murmur of wishes in the heart is its murmur
When the race to overtake intensifies and tightens

27. Its dawn and afternoon provide its visitors
When it hosts them with varieties of rapture

28. Dawn resembles dusk, so marvel
At a desert that became a garden of eternity

29. Moonlight embodies itself luminous in it
You'd think it pearls falling from a necklace

30. In every place or every bend
Of its sides, effortless magic stirs

31. Its full moon is not just the sky's moon
For in it are full moons that transcend counting

32. Take its description from me, for in its conscience
I occupy the place of the free soul that hides in armor

33. It has no shortcoming except its breeze
Increases the ember of my heart and its burning

34. It sharpens my feelings of existence so I transgress
More perceptive than the tools of astronomy

35. I record in it what I wish of ambitions
And wisps of the soul for the singing poet

36. And I convey from it in its daylight and dawn
Playful scraps of seriousness and jest

37. When friends gather in it I see them
As angels commanded to fulfill the pact

38. And if they rejoice at night, as hearts merit
I reckon them spirits who came from eternity

39. My infatuation with it left no strength for reason
But in the immersion of rapture I seek guidance

40. A city - what a city - magical city
Whose scent the blowing wind finds more aromatic than sprinkling rain

41. A city - this city - ascetic city
Whose public faith is multiples of what is seen

42. I see God in modern Egypt whenever
I see its flowers arranged in a necklace

43. I see God in it however I wish, and whoever lives
Like me draws near the One, the Unique

44. My heart and mind are confused in it
So my mind comes alive and my creed strengthened by it

45. Did the incarnationists see what I see
Of beauty that draws near to God or distances?

46. An era in which modern Egypt
Contains a knight that takes refuge in a handsome steed

47. I love you O modern Egypt so hear
My anthem and listen to no poet after me

48. Come see my heart as you knew it
Loyal to betrayal and forgiving to hatred

49. I am al-Agag, gentle with kindness and harm
I misguide my loved ones when I wish or guide

50. Remnants of a soul seeking return make me
Regress to heedless youth in purpose and aim

51. I love you, what can I say? My heart has awakened
And I see the path to integrity

52. Emotions that wandered in misguidance as if they were
Ships sailing in the darkness of night

53. I loved you, they wandered in misguidance as if they were
Pages written by the hand of futile chaos

54. Do not mention my era whether in anger or approval
I have intentionally forgotten or made myself forget what was of my era

55. My missteps I blame on myself as affliction
Hoping to extinguish the embers of my fervor

56. And how to forget, how can hope lie to me
When it talks of deliverance from captivity?

57. I love you with a passion hotter than turmoil
That ignites the plains all the way to death

58. I love you willingly and unwillingly, and I
Fear what you fear of that prohibition

59. Despite the injustice you have inflicted, I take refuge
With you in adversity and ask for help

60. Playfulness of shameful indulgence rebelled in me
Making me like the harshest asceticism

61. Show me a gateway to salvation and I will pursue it
For I have been utterly frustrated with misguidance in rejection

62. And how can I be saved? Alas, what
You have watered my soul with will hasten my demise

63. Passion called me, what did passion want with me?
It has weakened my resolve and undermined my restraint

64. When the causes of repentance appeared, breezes
Of your happiness blew, so I turned away from guidance

65. Have you forgotten how we were and left
No ambitions before or after?

66. My passion for you was passion, and my tribulation
With you made me in sorrow a solitary nation

67. Ask the night in modern Egypt, has it seen
In its era a love more loyal than mine?

68. And has the bright moon in its land seen
A heart truer in its misguidance and integrity?

69. And have its darknesses in its plains known
One more beloved to it than my infatuation and my wakefulness?

70. I used to meet it as the sun leaned
To the west, seeking drowsiness and requesting aid

71. So I filled it with inspiration, consciousness and youth
Until the sun awakened from its nap

72. Were those nights that do not return? And I have not ceased
Thanking passion in the lion's ferocity

73. You did not know that my burning ember
Would one day incline to peace and cooling off

74. It is the ember you know
And ember has dominion over solid stone

75. I will hurt you with estrangement and resentment, so observe
Afflictions that will afflict you from estrangement and resentment

76. Was my passion your undoing, so you thought
That immoderation in love has no limit?

77. That saying is true, for my youth
Will reach what embers cannot in burning

78. Years have passed in turmoil and our love
Battles with blame loaded with hostility

79. Has blame ever succeeded? And among them are loyalists
Whose devotion hurts them in my wakefulness

80. Your faults appear to my heart as virtues
Beauties that earn praise and thanks

81. From which valley of charm did gush
The springs of this daunting beauty in the valley of roses?

82. A thirsty one passed and the air scorching
So I heard a whisper of threat and promise

83. A dubious eye beckons
With the deception the times own

84. Can the lost know if the intimation's ill omen
Means kindness or good fortune with the gesture?

85. I see your house before me sometimes
And at others, I see it with buildings of China nearer

86. To the extent we experience union and estrangement
That determines what we experience of nearness and distance

87. Is it a house or a predator feared
That frightens the gazelles with its lethal assault?

88. So beware, beware of safety from you
And persistent villainy has no deterrent

89. I seek refuge in the Lord of jinn from you, and I
Know that there is no refuge from the chapter of passion

90. It suffices that I'm a resented lover
To whom lies are directed in the guise of advice

91. Your love judged that I willingly drink blame
And consider delusions a skill of glory

92. Since in the wilderness of passion and its guidance
I became an imam, your hands are bound with me

93. Answer: Was love a dream shattered
By the sobriety of slumber?

94. Was your clarity a glimpse visited by a brilliant
Flash in the night, stirring thunder?

95. One day I will forget you, and the heart can reconsider
Its ignorance to weigh what is right

96. One day I will forget my infatuation, then forget my temptations
And every ember of passion till it dies down

97. Answer me: I have an opinion that settles
Like the firm rock in the scabbard's sheath

98. Are you pleased that our lives become
Varieties of devotion enshrouded in asceticism?

99. You can have whatever you want, so go, just go
To the valley of oblivion or the highlands

100. And I can have whatever love wants, and love is the ruler
We see its tyranny in us as more just than aim

101. Its lands are peoples who consider
Every era apostate from passion's guidance

102. Your beautiful idols are your beauty
And idols of beauty have no tributary

103. So enough, enough! Loyalty to a youth
You returned its request in the ugliest refusal

104. My loved ones, what called you
To disturb your tender valley of roses?

105. By it fate lavished, though it does not lavish, so you were
Stingier than fate in rewarding

106. It quenched you, so you spurned, my passion, and I have not found
In the occasions of fate and fervor anyone to pass over my stumbling

107. Nights or weeks pass without me seeing
In my eagerness anything but unavailing promises

108. I excuse my loved ones barred
By sublime delusions from righteousness in promise

109. I excuse the kinfolk whose homes at Karkh were swept
For they have no power over the integrity of patience

110. What is your patience? You and I, between us
Are trifling steps that can be counted

111. When cheers arise you are with them
And when cheers subside you are with me

112. With five digits your feet are controlled
And you see me through them as lighter than effort

113. Come, and do not listen to the advice of a counselor
Who voices candid words from a servant's mind

114. The advice of some people is cloaked deceit
And the compassion of some people is a kind of hatred

115. I recognized my era through its structure, so who arises
With dye that surpasses India's philosophers?

116. Should I listen to the prattle of haters or complain of
The murmur of the beauty's partisans counseling passion?

117. It is beauty, so let it command whatever it wants, and let
Its will be - we are its most obedient troops

118. We hear, and whoever beauty acclaims listens
Lo! A whisper of beauty is a melody of eternity

119. Come, for times of purity are fleeting
And an instant we wasted has no return

120. Come quickly, do not say tomorrow
For tomorrow in truthful longing is an age of distance

121. Or else in modern Egypt are blossoming stars
That hope to have my affection

122. Baghdad in al-Rashid's era flourished
With its most fragrant breaths while in my era