1. O friend, is there a poet who has strayed with us
Beyond bearing the unseen or what cannot be seen!

2. They deceived you when imagination became reality
Indeed, the mirage, when you draw near, recedes

3. O friend, how many are killed in illusion and how much
Have our poems spoken a falsified saying?

4. What is poetry but our image in the water
Does the mirror reflect anything but what is seen?

5. So guard your tongue if its horses appeared
Lest the horses stumble or get entangled

6. The eyes of poetry lie, the glance of its arrows
Failed Qais, and Suleik, and Antara

7. We are not the people of eloquence in the line of rhetoric
To be the unruly horses at the chests of steeds

8. Poetry is magic, and clairvoyance is its craft
If the eye of truth turns its back and leaves

9. And I am Moses' staff that splits its seas
Oh woe to my poetry, how much I sank and sailed!

10. I have never unwillingly sipped the intoxication of my poetry
Lest poetry become unacceptable words

11. I let the tears of the passionate flow with disdain
From every letter creeping in their faults

12. I have never raged against one whose path is my path
And I have blamed those who sold the countries and rent them

13. So I heard the whispers of transgressors around me
Asking: Does a blind man compete with one who sees!

14. I deposited the salt of my poems in the cloud's chest
So it rained on the breast of rhymes until drunk

15. Eyes overflowed with it until they
From the hunger of the eye, flowed like rivers

16. I looked in the “barren land” at my poem
Speaking failed and I did not settle on the ground

17. So I left myself, forced to my assumption
To return a group that had contrived and lied

18. O you who travel to speech, wait
No ship sails the seas going back

19. It is the journey of the arrow leaving its bow
Never returning to report what happened

20. So “return to yourself” and divert it from its passion
And abandon the way of language until you are excused