1. Thoughts occur to me, if only I
Had not thought what occurred to my mind

2. Years of joy, their torches were lit
With flames of love kindled by my heart

3. You turned away from me, how could that be a sin
One day it will be remembered when my luck returns

4. You drifted away until I was left tortured
By my fate, family and hopes

5. I was in Baghdad where the youth were refined
My soul greeted it despite my tormentors

6. You will remember in New Cairo a night
We spent unlike any other imagined

7. Will you abandon my home, alas the anguish
For you are the preoccupier of my longing heart

8. My sins though I have none with you, you were
Just a notion that stirred in love’s confusion

9. You will remember days and nights for us
With you the essence of my lofty soul

10. I remembered how we were and found
Only a teardrop to weep the empty past

11. Euphrates flooded, and my longing for you grew
My wandering soul found with tears a chain

12. I remembered the Euphrates days and passion
Shook my heart with yearning like an earthquake

13. I remembered a day that will not return for I
See your beloved shadow a fistful of sand

14. I will restrain my soul from your love though
I am my own protector from my fate and state

15. I cried for you, not just cried, none
Cried for you throughout time, no family or kin

16. You made my time an ember of lament
It is horror in the misery of bliss and terrors

17. I try to forget what was between us
Yet my heart sighs bitterly with protracted discord

18. Leila’s home, I am a lover
Overcome with shifting states of love

19. Leila’s home, how are you, for I
Am the blind man Leila, and I am the maternal uncle

20. Euphrates wept so her tears flooded
And the soul’s tear comes in shapes of love

21. Come aid me against the wave of agony
Lit by raging passion’s fighting fire

22. An era has passed without seeing Leila or her family
Estrangement will prolong through years

23. If I pour out my soul, I hope to meet them
The heavens tremble and the dwellers shake

24. Gentle as eyelids, when war awakens
They are lions, fierce in battle, otherwise serene

25. My tears wept for them and were to their stinginess
A flood on Euphrates’ soil

26. Baghdad inspired my poetry, so may it live
And my passion for it last for all time

27. I became infused with Baghdad until I was called
A Baghdadian, destined for eternity in paradise

28. The homes of my loved ones and haunts of my youth
Every passion in heart and soul is born anew

29. When I remember Baghdad and my soul burns
Awoken by turmoil and tumult

30. I converse with Leila and ask the night about a love
Shackled in the crevices of my heart and soul

31. Euphrates floods but times are peaceful
The rain of arrows stopped and war is over

32. In Baghdad is it not enough what love has wrought
Love is the most perilous tempest for hearts

33. When an eye meets an eye, regiments clash
Without soul or heart amid the fray

34. Take me to you, I will drink up the water
And save you from it as worries pour

35. My sorrows and griefs are revolts
Pleasing to time unlike that sadness

36. Worries drowned my heart so what do
Nights plot in my torment and tragedy

37. I feel alien in the world, no homeland wants me
Nor shelter for me in life to lean

38. Worries like mountains’ weights I carried
Yet to time’s worries I pay no heed

39. A brilliant soul though not hailed by people
With no patience for vileness

40. If people’s opinion proves true one day rejoice
Their notions sank while my judgment soared

41. Fifty years aspired to their end unmet
So do not ask me of my life or age

42. Do not ask me for reward of your debts
My compositions and rebuttals were enough

43. The world assails me, for I battle it
And killing begets more killing

44. Who are you, o world, and frivolity's
Tenants, if dismissed, have nowhere to go

45. I will crush this lesser scorpion
With my sandal, disciplining women is to smack

46. So do not wonder at my rage and cruelty
For I am peerless among all creation