1. How did the phantom of my beloved find its way to my tomb
While the night has veiled my eyelids with sin

2. He came to Damascus at night, reclining
From a chamber, greeting it from another reclining place

3. He strides the sand dunes and tramples
The nests of ostriches upon the backs of oryxes

4. And startles the ostriches while they are all asleep
With his voice between a female ostrich and her little ones

5. Alas for a composed phantom that visited me
While fear had cast its hand upon my liver

6. When has any determination not crumbled away?
When has any prey not been terrified?

7. The Egyptian armies threaten us
Their vanguards like the sparks of ignited firewood

8. A fire that came to us from Egypt fueled it
The kindling of its ambush from Sarkhad

9. And the stabbing from Suluk and Makhlujah
Secretly like the plunge of a marauding wolf

10. They unleashed the price of living, so it came upon us
While they enjoy cheapness in the wasteland

11. Except for the difference between our famine
And their cheapness like the deviation of a good archer’s arrow

12. Until the steed charged as if
Its owner had unsheathed part of a scabbarded sword

13. The steed charged with what its owner desired
And the tryst was not missed from the appointment

14. Oh beauty of a whitened night
With beauty under the skin of a dark night

15. Were it not for the conversation of our souls, dreams would not have hunted
At night the phantom of one not hunted

16. When I saw people confused by strife
Whose claws were spread among all believers

17. Polytheism was in comfortable living, most fertile
While Islam was nervous and most distressed

18. And they split into two sects, Sunnis and Shiites
Each claiming, “I am the guided one”

19. This one inclined towards Abu Bakr
And that one sought Ali with affection

20. And desires made them drink a cup that left
No coherence among people except confusion

21. I called out, what is left for me in my time
Except to pursue happy religion with the aid of the Creator?

22. How much grace did He first bestow and how much
Well-known grace has He given me, and how many hands!

23. So for Him be praise every fortuitous year
Upon Him forever at the rise of auspicious stars

24. My branches trembling, my pride broken
Like a branch in the twisting of the bending sand dune

25. I gave him a cup whose drafts
Contain concerns, a boon companion of dissolution

26. In a sweet-smelling garden whose breezes
Are like a laughing plain above blossoming flowers

27. In it is a pool whose edges the morning
Has engraved like the engraving of Damascus steel

28. Or the blade of Saad al-Din, Lord of gifts
If thoughts of the religion visit him in fervor

29. Who casts horsemen down from the saddles of their steeds
On the day of battle with sharpened swords

30. His morals have pleased all creatures
And he obeyed his Creator in love of Muhammad

31. A man of lofty ambition among people
Of esteem transcending the distinction of distinction

32. He remains in continuous blessings
Protected from the evil of the toppling fate