1. My life is too short for blame or rebuke,
So grant me refuge from the slanderer's vituperation.

2. Every sick-eyed one recites verses against me,
The wild gaze of the jealous tribesman of Tha'lab.

3. If the remedy lies with the sick one, as they say,
Then bodies may find health in diseases.

4. The glance of those with white in their eyes, when they looked,
Was like the glance of those with white and raisins in them.

5. Thus their words sounded alike in speech
Save in deed and performance they differed.

6. I stood amidst the ruins I thought were
The relics of my far-wandered body.

7. Weeping over the trace seen in the abode's site—
Can you wonder that a ruin weeps over a ruin?

8. Any white-skinned woman whose fingers
Once touched Joseph's shirt in days gone by,

9. Her smile makes pearls and rubies superfluous,
Lovely as she is, with natural finery.

10. My tears have left on my cheek traces
Like the kisses that marked it in days gone by.

11. It is as if, from embarrassment, Sayf al-Dīn's sword
Bore the blush that reddens the faces of the shy.

12. Sword of its bearer swelling with pride
As it wreaks havoc among swords and kingdoms.

13. When it would slip out from its sheath,
The blood's dark night enwrapped it in valor.

14. If it undertook the guardianship of a sea, its fingers
Would reveal how fixed is the link of fate and appointed time.

15. Of the blades that gleamed with their lightning bolts
In scabbards, they are the clouds of summer rain.

16. When they joined battle one day, those swords
Flashed against their burnished counterparts like flames.

17. They encountered everyone they charged, till they met
Commoners at the arena with their equals.

18. They struck against the Greeks with their swords,
While desert Arabs stabbed with keen blades.

19. The neighing of the steeds made them shudder
Beneath the neighing of the pregnant she-camels.

20. To them blood is wine, and the horses' cries
Are tavern songs amid revels and sands shifting.

21. The steeds it transported like the heroes themselves,
So they walked with a drunkard's unsteady steps.

22. Each naked warrior clutching his horse's reins,
Wounded in chest and shoulder by the lancer.

23. Each gust blown about by the wind whose lineage
It claims—but if the wind sought it, it would not attain.

24. O horseman of the Muslims, listen! Hear naught
But the jingling of white steeds amid the hills.

25. The plaint of an alien abroad, finding no
Supporters, nor could he speak or say

26. But for you—complaining of hardships grown broad,
Too confining for him, however open the way.

27. He hopes in you to dispel them, after God, for one
May hope in the great to relieve the dire.

28. How could I face days of scorn
When the noble sons of Ruzaik have left me?

29. Without them, I would be helpless before disasters
Were it not for resolve's awakening, swift and bold.

30. How could I doff the garb of humiliation while my hand
Bears the brand of freedom and the soft palm of subjugation?

31. Why should my soul fear extinction? How often have I found
Weakness acceptable, fearing extinction when it felt no weariness?

32. I am one who has slain Time, knowing
I shall not pass the night in despair or hoping.

33. If the water of youth shows my rod green again
The bends of my nights have yellowed a supple rod.

34. My experience has surpassed the extent of old men,
Outstripping my years though not my prime.

35. Early life is better than its late stages,
And how far the dawn's glow from the darkness of night!

36. Let him who thought me beneath him exult—to him
Belongs magnifying himself to gain glory by tricks.

37. In men's eyes the moon's image seems enlarged,
Though beside Saturn it is small in understanding's view.

38. It did my poetry no harm that I failed to reply
To my tears' call—and what else calls but a ruin?

39. In praising Sayf al-Dīn my verse wandered
Boastfully beyond praising Saif al-Dawla the hero.