1. It's as if I never confided my troubles to you both,
Nor did you see my burning agitation and anxiety.

2. I left my eyelids burning and bleeding,
To shed tears unjustly and excessively.

3. My respite came to my heart through weeping and wailing,
And in Alexandria the plan of a house was drawn,

4. Which when it collapsed, I was patient and strong.
I remembered in it and through it my forgotten torments,

5. My burning regrets inflamed the calamities I bore.
It continues to revive sorrow and longing

6. For it and for the morals of enduring men.
I have missed you for so long with every kind of loss,

7. And news of your affairs overwhelmed all resolution.
Its setbacks erased the paths of meaning,

8. And its night extinguished the lamps of reason.
So the intelligent cannot comprehend its wonders,

9. Nor can the astute conceive its meaning.
If the unveiling of it were published for Khalil,

10. Its mysteries would elude the understanding of Khalil.
Live in comfort or cease to tend to my rights,

11. Connect or never connect my line.
When I see you and who sees you straying,

12. You will wear the garb of uncertainty and speculation.
Epic poems forget the reading of your father,

13. The books of my father's tribe.
If I were like you, would hope be expected,

14. Given my confused affairs and worries surround me?
The fancy of postponed ambition misleads me,

15. The certainty of present despair at hand thwarts me.
A hope that displaced the breadth of my heart,

16. As miserliness occupies the heart of the miser.
And a view that shook my good faith until

17. Its waters flowed over my honor and integrity.
So my stance awaiting you brings benefit

18. Like the early morning rain on arid ruins.
And I bent my wishes within my own breast,

19. As sight lingers on the soft cheek.
I once took pride in contentment more than the content,

20. Who forfeited ignorance for great disgrace.
So I became more abject than the subtle meaning,

21. Which in its poverty needs a brilliant mind.
So I don't know whether it's me who strayed

22. Or you who abandoned excellence.
When did the harvest ripen and branches thrive

23. If their roots were rotten?
I blamed you for neglect yet you are vain,

24. Wronging you, for you don't deserve neglect.
Though both your parents are from Yemen,

25. The origins of your fortune are from thieves.
Go slowly, your ignorance will soon pass,

26. Leaving you in long disgrace.
When you plot against me, reduce it, for your fires

27. Are fewer than the few.
The bitterness of this abode will pardon you

28. And disappear in the sweetness of departure.
I will moan knowing no cure will heal

29. My sickness, like knots or shackles.
Even if your hand were a thousand seas

30. Overflowing, each sea pouring a thousand Niles.