1. O Zarwa, you have bequeathed
Immunity from every malady,

2. I did not know that her words
Could heal hearts of sorrows,

3. Alas! What yearning for
Those dwellings and tents,

4. My knowledge of them
Was but a dream in slumber,

5. A fair Yemeni, her shyness
Prevents her from speaking,

6. With cool cheeks
That mock the wine’s fervor,

7. Or the taste of honey whose fragrance
Is like musk freshly sealed,

8. If a corpse tasted it
It would not rest under tombstones,

9. And a weak, yearning poem
Like my body in illness,

10. Her feet made heavy so she prefers
To sit rather than stand,

11. She complains of her waist from it
Like her lovers’ passion,

12. How many nights have I spent
Sipping its wine from that veil,

13. Until she saw the white of my hair
Streaking my temples like lines,

14. She said: Are you still not satisfied
After in dreams so long?

15. As if her falling tears mingled
With the dew of the imam,

16. The just sultan,
Pride of the resolute, son of the resolute, son of the resolute,

17. Of the virtuous, the generous,
And the greatest benefactors,

18. And brother of hospitality, bounty,
And magnificent chivalry,

19. His noble ancestors are
The generous, clan of the generous,

20. Their palms overflow with munificence
Like clouds dripping rain,

21. Pillars of patience in calamity
And oceans of generosity at feasts,

22. They excelled mankind with fatherhood
Excelling the delicate over the coarse,

23. They knew sovereignty and politics
And harmony before weaning,

24. Their nature inclined to benevolence
To reform the people,

25. O son of the most qualified of Arabs
And the most deserving of leadership and turban,

26. You are the supported, we never cease
To pray for the eternity of your reign,

27. Time lost its way due to your
Famed justice in Egypt and Syria,

28. All who profess piety
Attribute it to your superiority, from Shem and Ham,

29. And the lofty were abased
To you, and the stubborn acquiesced,

30. So you vanquished the armies of unbelief and idolatry
With the divinely supported troops,

31. You clarified to each heretic among them
Without any courtesy or softness,

32. And peeled away their plots
As daylight peels from darkness,

33. So the structure of their order unravelled
Before by terrible death,

34. They wanted to fight you before, but if
They marched against you it was without reins,

35. Pride deluded them, so you inflicted on them
A resounding defeat,

36. O rain of the people of earth,
A time of dew and rain in the throngs,

37. You were gladdened by the feast for which
Yearning to meet you in peace,

38. To you, the Feast of the Fast is a feast
Every year,