1. A message about meeting you hinders me
And one like me should not be disobedient

2. Can I expect a time to be destined for me
Whose nature accords with our intimacy?

3. So a hostile night seizes our distance
And a friendly day expands our nearness

4. Indeed my soul yearned for your dwelling
Like a bundle yearning for its homeland

5. It endured the intimacy on my behalf
And loaded me with unbearable sorrow

6. A sadness made my shedding tears red
With its heat my yearning heart melts

7. As if the eye drops from it another eye
So its pearl weeps sincere agony

8. And it endowed me when I ignited determination’s flint
Which in my slowness, its flame kindled

9. Does not God execute through it a decree
By which He reasons with me, and I am unrestrained?

10. I am done with youth, so I no longer hope
For frivolity which would distract me from the wine

11. Nor am I, in my prime, a boy
Obliged to every passion by duties

12. Nights make my cup work joy
So I have nothing but the sip of the cup a sip

13. I avoided misguidance with insight
As the truthful avoids lies

14. And if the vanities of passions
Flash their lightning bolts at my words

15. I wrote to you at sixty years
So widely in my sins, though narrow

16. And whoever travels to seventy years
The arena of death is his path

17. O Abu Al-Hassan, pluck safety from me
As if my breath were musk, so smell it

18. And say to one who is ill in distress
"Take comfort in which he will awaken"

19. I see destined proportion, when it saw me
I proceeded, so it was outrun

20. So do not despair, for the Merciful has kindness
Which unravels the tight knot easily