1. Abu Ali, pride restored to his refuge,
So pitch a tent on the heights of his valley and portion.

2. And tomorrow come close in thought and feeling
To the scene at times, and to the listener.

3. And to the envious, witless, I said,
Of effective words that make bleed, and his wares,

4. Do not cheapen your honor, O noble one, and
Travel light with the nostrils of one bound for his deputation.

5. Do not feel safe from his duplicity and fraud—
A blow from his club, if you trust his arrow.

6. Beware playing the spy, that would tempt you,
For I fear for you from his claws.

7. You see the honorable screened around him
As his retinue, and you meet his followers from his faction,

8. Alighting in the protected highlands
While they are below that in their multitude.

9. O Lord of a day whose radiance shows forth
At the dawn of good repute bursting its bud!

10. For me in your hands the soft hair melted,
You decreed the combing in his woolen robe.

11. You did not change my face from the original dye
More suited to one of blended hues in its braid.

12. No! Bright the dew, vain the wasteland,
Your suitor did not obsess in his longing.

13. The messenger brought me luxurious clothes
For the summer of a lord in his keep.

14. From the horrid quality of the strange garment—
Glory is the glory of the windswept in its horridness!

15. Had it been clad in simple cloth, pride
Would have galloped in discretion.

16. Fine silk whose touch is enjoyed,
Pouring that makes youth subject to its mail.

17. And the mystery of perfume as though my hair
Were, at times, the kinsman of eyes in its innovation.

18. As if the bloom of nacre and blood in its redness
Captured, and in its flash.

19. And light, the light of the nude, was poured in its
Shooting through the darkness to its branches.

20. None in the towns of Rayy and Qura and
Zabid like it, neither in its herd nor flock.

21. No eye overlooks it from any
Who would do it justice, but ask for its workmanship.

22. You left me lofty-lidded in the gloom of fate and time
In its beauty, slenderness, stem and trunk.

23. Renewing glory and ascent in its seasons and days
Announcing it loudly to all its assembly.

24. And to one jealous in your presence, I said
Many effective words I built up from his side.

25. I described a sword but forgot its upright one,
And a roebuck’s pointed chin I neglected in its leap.

26. You are our brother and a kingly lord
From whose gown we exceed what we remove.

27. So wear the like of it, the like of you
Of the ample robe of thin fabric in its wideness,

28. Demanding rhymes but for its rider,
My father, designer of the impregnable verse form.

29. Sorcerer of poetry who bewitched pure white
From the motley colors, admirable, jesting in his sorcery.

30. Raiment of love, you surpassed below the horizon,
Its settlement, we do not say, of its settlement.

31. You went before till you took away before them
What you wished of its perfection and pieces.

32. Poetry is relief whose trait is not
Long nights but for its sleepless maker.