1. If you cannot help me, then others are helpless
O you to whom all people are submissive

2. Indeed, your love has taken our hearts
As if it were verses and revelation

3. And your cheek is a sign that does not bend
Beautiful as the morning has evidence

4. As if it were a rose or violet
That spends the night and morning free and loose

5. And a chalice of healing ruby wine
Its companionship purifies minds

6. To protect a tender sapling and a wild doe
All souls for it have spilled blood

7. Our lifespans compared to it are short
As if it were a mirror, its image and its shadow

8. An idol I wore with pride and dressed
In my finest clothes, stingy and thin

9. Strangely, my blood became lawful
Though its nature is forbidden and allowed

10. It sins, so pardon it, though it is unpardonable
As if I have immunity for the crime

11. It robbed life from me and evaded
Turning from me, aloof and averse

12. The bough of its stature does not bend to affection
As it leans away, so does it lean toward you

13. It desires harmony and flirtation in its coldness
And in its coldness lies the cure for passion’s wounds

14. Each day it has new youthful charms for me
And messages and means and a messenger

15. And I incline toward my conversant for his speech
As if it were water and I were thirsty

16. So the heart melts when love draws near
And the melt becomes a heart when love moves away

17. Reason is nothing I possess or know
Hearing is a door beyond which is locked

18. Love's pangs made the planets burn
Its ashes with my tears are mixed

19. So my tears like solids take form
From my wounded eyelids they pour

20. I and the day vie for the pleasure of his company
My eyes hurt from the sparks

21. The night veils them like my eyes from my beloved
Destroying the lover while its tail trails

22. The illness, let the spy kill it, for in love
It is like deprivation, an intruder

23. Ignorant of love, yet you gained experience
Would that I in your love were ignorant

24. Would that my passion were a lighter sickness
Than what makes the critic ill

25. Would that I had never tasted the sweetness of love
And never been left craving more

26. I wasted my days pining in sorrow
With no embrace or kiss to be had

27. As if the days did not allow
My arm to cradle his head

28. As if the days had a pact with me
And I alone was held responsible

29. The failure of hopes necessitated our quest
To the Judge of judges, for with Him is hope

30. The source of healers before they come
I drowned, as if floods were in my hands

31. The master of permitted magic in poetry
With which the unfinished poem is adorned

32. A judge in whose court the opponent is his opponent
Out of hatred, yet he returns to him in amity

33. Judging, satisfying both parties out of insight
As if revelation inspired his thoughts

34. The envoys of Sacred Law a garden I flourished
And a garden when cloud envoys are fertile

35. In reality, Sacred Law is a sanctuary
And its guard is my Lord

36. O you who leads processions of virtues
While ignorance's army is slain

37. You have harvested praise and positions, youth
And old and mature strive toward your door

38. You are distinguished among the virtuous
As the virtuous is distinguished from the less so

39. Those who seek you, seeking your worth, are perplexed
None but our Master can interpret

40. Or likened you, so your merit shone as witness
That the morning has no match or peer

41. Difficulties attached themselves to you and their knots
Were loosened from the leash of tongues

42. They tested your resolve, and the high principles are swords
From which fate recoils, exhausted

43. So sheathe it, my fortune, as much as you can
An eyelid for a blinking eye has no substitute

44. You are generous, and one who errs like me
So reduce my sins, for the generous forgives

45. I am one whose stars allowed poetry
Inscribing my past errors as polished

46. I am the full moon of poetry's horizons since youth
Its suns wandering through countries

47. I inherited words from Harun Al-Rashid's era
And with you are examples and verified accounts

48. I am the one who saw people and then saw him
And he was distinguished from the Nile of life

49. So appraise him in your appraisal of men, for he
Is no ingot, though you have refined him

50. You have revered me to be, though I have not been
In a position for poetry to enter

51. Passion is sorrow that cannot be answered, and one like me
To it all the sorrowful have ease of access

52. It rode fate's she-camels and threw them
Into an abyss where tomorrow wanders lost

53. It does not leave pleasures though they are disgraceful
And when does the soul find dignity while humiliated?

54. Coarse clothes but finest in their adornment
So the lion is a wonder, and the clothes a puzzle

55. Time is bored with all those it has bored
Unless his deeds have not cease to entertain

56. It carves them like pearls in oyster shells
Though left scattered on the ground

57. It is enough for the likes of me that among its pursuits
Is a soul rising through the ranks of souls

58. Even if my clothes have ripped pockets
To drag behind me the train of lovers' gowns

59. Priceless sabers know not their value
Unless drawn from the sheath and put to use

60. To you it earnestly comes, mouth full of purpose
Arriving in modesty's garb and trailing robe

61. Too delicate to walk under the very clouds
Or be led on by greed

62. Eyes long to see it as if it were
Cheeks' marks, beloved and beautiful

63. Its words to the generous are like
The reproach of a beloved tactfully voiced

64. So draw it forth as the flower of your sky
While you are the moon, so never set

65. Were it not for your embodied merit
I would not in odes its honor hail

66. I would not, were it not for you
Have been worthy to say poetry, though now I spout it

67. Glory is you, and all seek you
Merit is you, and all else are superfluous