1. Take my hand if there is kinship between us
Of virtue, estrangement, and courtesy

2. A young man holds out to a young man in intimacy
While we three, there is no closeness between us

3. You are our sheikh and no intercessor for us
And who would intercede for the noble if they granted

4. Generosity rolls in your hands as
The clouds rolled over your slippers

5. And if the land pleased you, it revolved around you
Guarded by the shooting stars that watch over you

6. For its people a fierce and mighty man
And a guardian from you, sympathetic and loving

7. So he opened but did not have enough hospitality and bounty
That is how the eminent are when they speak

8. Your face is the morning of richness and I have a time
Hopeful of its favor and awaiting

9. What then is my answer if it is said what richness
Have you attained and what has seeking availed you

10. While you are like the sun in their dwellings
Rising every morning over the hillsides

11. You dwelled next to a palm tree making it bear fruit
And tapped from it a clan of the unseen

12. Filling them with money before
So it has become for your grave the conquest

13. And the paper turned away from its pulpits
A people, if they speak eloquently, they wail

14. So who can restrain the enemies and their tongues
When their serpents’ venom makes them curse

15. If it were not for your knowledgeable market
A full moon whose udder I would milk

16. Do not approve for me to live in barrenness
With no clouds for me to have a pocket

17. After it spread that I have a supporter in you
Through whom I seek in matters, I account

18. And it was said the judge of judges, may his banner remain high
To him Fathi stretches out and traces his lineage

19. And its cloudy hands pulled me
Where anguish pours forth, it pours out

20. Unleash my tongue and listen to its wonders
If you are one whom rapture shakes

21. I am a man whose craft is amorous verse and panegyric
And my art is rhetoric and speeches

22. Meanings offer themselves to me in their blossoms
So I pick them while others gather firewood

23. And how many houses have I filled with wisdom
And if you wish, Ruins of Arabs

24. I make lawful a draught of the pure water for the heart
And in the throat of my envious enemies, flame.

25. And sometimes I am weary of amorous dalliance, but what
Are sweeter than the blow of hunting and striking

26. I make the magic of the tongue lawful in the gold of the heart
And in the throat of my envious enemies, flame.

27. The gathering falls in rapture at night
Prostrating when hearing it and drawing nearer

28. The fiction of goblets was pleasing to me as a habit
And virtues of the select have pleased with it as well.

29. This is on the forehead of the eminent, a mark
While that is in the bud of desire, down

30. O Egypt, the stranger has no abode with you
Other than sorrows and constriction

31. My abode of estrangement which you have concerned yourself with
You are my abode, and how excellent is Aleppo

32. An abode where sorrows guested it
And feed on its fragrance, O sweet basil.

33. Neither have the noble made it their concern
Nor defended it from injustice, a place of return

34. Embrace its prosperity if you descend upon it
For its prosperity are the most precious nobility

35. I left it and since olden times the nobles
Divided in the lands and diverged

36. It is upon me not to sleep, its homesickness
Lodged between the ribs, its sorrows cleaved

37. Ah! And what does the stranger have in a land
If he is badly-treated or insulted?

38. I laugh out of pain in my kin, and it pleases me
When they are alone, to shed tears

39. I shake the trunk of pleasance but it shows
Naught but its thorns and unripe clusters

40. What garden could there be a nightingale like me
That hides my misery and makes a careful pick?

41. The one I trusted betrays me
I do not blame the one who wages war

42. I do not accept betrayal, how can I accept it
While glory refuses it in dignity and repute?

43. By its light the sun is radiant at its rising
Before the darkness can overtake to veil it

44. It is thought my fracture is from the blow of a calamity
But rather from one I loved, the sublime

45. It is as if I am of a glass body
Struck in its breaking, the cause evident

46. So wipe away my tears for none but you, my hand
For the tears of the free, it is right to protect them

47. Maybe safety will join me
And this split heart will cleave