1. Yet had it not been for the parting drink
And a quarter that turned into summer resorts and squares

2. The fragrance of longing and valleys of sorrow
Would have driven the caravan back upon its tracks

3. We would have caught up with their last ones, as passionate love
Had overturned hearts we knew as free as birds

4. The sun and the night turned back upon us in defiance
With a sun rising for them on the side of morning

5. Its radiance dyed the darkness and the canopy of heaven folded up
For the joy of it, its broidered robe fluttering

6. By God, I know not whether dreams of a slumberer
Have touched us or whether Joshua was among the band

7. My pact with it is that it brings love to life and slays it
And bifurcates the tenths of the heart rending them

8. With blame I cuff passion’s hump and it can take
The winds prisoner when it sways and swings

9. It strides along virtue upon virtue but only
A line of verse pleases you when it is chiselled

10. Have you not seen the deer of sand as though
They saw the lord of the sands and the morn armoured

11. If the wild creature startled at the sight of me
My hoary hair startled it even more

12. On the morrow care will stride with lines scored
On my cheeks, the road of perdition runs from it to the soul, desolate

13. It is falsehood that is maltreated and companionship nursed
Old friends baked and new ones patched up

14. It has an appearance in the eye gleaming white
But in the heart it is the blackest blacker than jet

15. While we treat it fairly, willing or not
And the noble one averts his face, utterly riled

16. This age has treated us with a policy
Absurdly, no clever slave has ever treated thus

17. Every day tribulations alight and take wing
As though fate is being felled by them

18. Drops of them are fatal misfortunes and forbidden draughts
Of life, a seeping poison, are baked for the shrinking soul

19. So if we are neglected, we redouble our efforts
And if we are compelled, what can we do but chafe?

20. The glory of the son of Joseph aggrieved the enemies
And the flawed one in the world is obsessed with the meritorious

21. I have grasped a rope from it though time
Has gnawed it away, it keeps snapping

22. It is the torrent: confront it and you break its onrush
Conduct it from its flanks and it will follow

23. And I have seen no benefit in one who does no harm
And no harm in one who brings no benefit

24. It speaks, so it makes heard, and walks, so it hastens,
And strikes against the essence of God, so it hurts

25. A passage lies open to it from itself, some of itself,
The rest for praise and reward altogether

26. Seeing in all terrible stinginess, it overlooks it
For it sees in itself what is more bitter and foul

27. Every eclipse is a horror in the prairies
But it is fouler in the sun and the moon

28. The return to creation after death and its driving force
Is a return for us before death and a place of return

29. Born to it, munificence has settled its zeal
So it came to rest and it does not cease to tremble

30. When bounty is stripped from a man
It issues from the bays of his palms trailing it

31. And if the black nights and white trip up
Solitude befriends them as they mass together

32. And if it detects the wealth of a people, the palms
Suffice them from gain and virtue a handful

33. A day when glory remains protected at its core
By the thick of the loins while souls are squandered

34. A summer of clamour and battle’s plunging charger
But it is a rain of blood, squared

35. Scowling, its heroes clad in every coat of mail
A man glimpses it and it is more sinuous and twisting

36. And a red-smeared charger assists it
Teeth set in the hearts cleaving them

37. Some drink the fresh milk from the udders
A gulp, while it gives others the dregs to drain

38. You split apart the swelling of war’s arrogance
And with the sword it was content, though cloven

39. At Shindibaya, the hillsides, Arshshad
Mauqan, the rugged summits convulsing

40. Abrushtaweem, the Ghaz and the point
Where its arrows meet, the steeds stamping and rearing

41. It became a disappointment to yearning and its lineage
Abandoned lineage of men, itself disappointment and dejection

42. Prudence, if hasty, brings benefit, and if it waits
For sometimes waiting is swifter

43. My hopes have shaded you, in might there is strength
In arrow, true aim, and in bow, tension

44. And riches are mine if my wishes are fulfilled
In poetry, save in your praise where I find compliance

45. And you, if you decline on occasion, do not demean
Or pasture, if you decline, and the meadow lies open

46. I have seen my hopes in you alone, desire
But in all other men, wishful thinking

47. And how many stumblers among us you have grasped by the forelock
And he came to have at scant glory a rising

48. So his name in disasters drove them back
When once his name was the cannonaded

49. The sword is only an ingot, if you left it
In its primal temper, it would never cut

50. But for the filing of its keenness
The flint mass would still crack under it

51. It has sisters aforetime you have heard tell
And if they have not rung long by me, you will hear