1. To what light of auspicious hopes do you set forth,
While the clouds’ rain passes by you as a funeral procession?

2. Alas, the age has lost its sight, so there is no guidance left,
And the hand of glory is paralyzed, so it has no strength remaining.

3. It seems to me now that dawn after you is gloom,
That vegetation is desolation, and company is loneliness.

4. I yearn to ransack your pure, sweet earthly grave -
Perhaps I may find healing, even if such an act is forbidden.

5. It is as though, when I buried you in that tomb, a bird
Had lost its power of flight, its chicks and its nest.

6. My eyes have a place for their tears and their wakefulness;
My side is forbidden pillows and mattresses.

7. I console myself, prolonging my voice in elegy,
As Hamza and Warsh prolonged the recital in chanting.

8. The tombs were pleased with your burial place and ceaselessly
Above it is the sorrowful chant for me of dove and finch.

9. The blossoms of suns mourn you with me alternately,
And in their roses are the pouring of tears and the flames of sorrow.

10. Black from kohl, red from weeping for you
And the softness of the delights of youth, its prime.

11. They distracted me from tryst, perfume, and sweets -
So the yellow flowers did not distinguish the hoopoe's flock.

12. His bashfulness drew back my hand from my burning cheeks.
If it did not scratch me, still it wounded my heart.

13. Despite your brave father the lion, your hand snatched you
From a hand to which cub and wild ass are equal.

14. Had a beast but understood the meaning of fate,
The ram would have refrained for our sake from mounting the ewe.

15. Whoever knows the world awake from its bliss,
And become like me, rising at morning gripped by cares.

16. What youth does not fade, its freshness withering?
What fuel for passion is the passion not itself fuel for the blaze?

17. My beloved, whose breast does not change
For other than what pleases me, whose secret is not broadcast -

18. Every loved one fades, except the child who gladdens
Both parents with his love - their sight is dazzled by him.

19. You were created noble in happiness and in joy,
And died young, no wickedness or shame attached to you.

20. You found good fortune and made an island your own,
Where Ibn Radmir and his allies terrify me with their snakes.

21. Serpents writhe between their fangs -
We live between houses of money, were their bites harmless!

22. You were but my madness and my talisman -
When fate bit, when its wrapped goods were opened by the robber.

23. So death singled you out and drew you away headlong.
They stabbed with guile - though they smiled to my face!

24. "There is no power or strength save in God,"
Good words that bear the Throne on high!

25. I am content with the decree of God and your name
Engraved in my heart, fixed there like an inscription.

26. I take pride in belonging to the knightly company
The cavaliers of the world, for whom its embers blaze.

27. Noble men, fountains of dew in their palms -
When awash, they think that they are only sprinkling!

28. They shared water freely in his day,
And forgave him when some said, "He has forbidden waste!"

29. Their freedmen may mount their thoroughbred steeds,
So great is their love of humility that they go on foot!

30. The ignorant sees my merits as faults
While the wise man - can his sight not pick out palms in a sandy waste?

31. Your songs, Abd al-Ghani my beloved,
I thirst for them - can one who loves you be sated?

32. I have made pretending your sickness itself a sickness
That my blood may flow and the swelling subside!

33. I asked the doctors of medicine about them,
Even he whose house is at Lucena.

34. Men's eyes were dazzled by your attributes -
As though you were a sun facing them while they blinked!

35. Solomon's wisdom in his decree
Before another pleader like me who says "I plead!"

36. He erred and stumbled when his dove came to him
And the jinn fell silent, awed by his command.

37. I have lost loved ones - so is every gloating enemy
Really confident that what casts down will not overthrow?

38. I have renounced the world and wander distraught.
Had I consented to endure, I would not have said to them "Endure!"

39. At the death of one who waters his money and feeds it,
Whose potion is fraud, whose food is usury -