1. Has the withered garden regained its blossoms,
Or has the sweet rain increased its drops?

2. Or has the folded bud woven brocade,
Or has the embroidered cloud sewn gems?

3. Or has the rose cloaked in its petals
Flashed with the lightning of a cloud and extinguished the coal?

4. And has the morning breeze shaken a cradle
For a child in the arms of the New Year but me?

5. On the delicate, thin leaves
That cling to the branches bending under their weight,

6. Are ornaments for spring, glistening
White and red feathers fluttering.

7. Has the glowing sunset changed its color
Or has dawn brightened and split the horizon?

8. Nay, poverty permanent has inscribed them
A hand that wields pens in abundance

9. And marks them idle musings
That roam through expanses and traverse the rugged.

10. Like salaal in every land,
Hawks circling, eagles soaring.

11. She has folded from them redolent pages
To shame the tails of eagles in flight.

12. So has the house of sweetness gifted
Pleasing breezes that waft fragrance from its pinnacles?

13. The necklace of virtue she has unstrung a necklace
With a necklace of the two seas she has adorned me.

14. Its pavement glitters and turns into rays
Letting fall in the courtyard a scattering of pearls.

15. String the unstrung necklace between
My wrists wet with a profusion of musk.

16. And paint on the parchment of my cheek
A mole, relic of nights past and gone.

17. Since the Tigris has flooded from it an extent
That drowned all its banks in its tide and ebb;

18. By my life it has dispensed a draught that intoxicates
And exhausted the briny sea with its drops;

19. You have turned from meanings, succor, until
You have spurred its steed and it rears restively;

20. It strikes the virgin meaning with the eye
Beholding you whenever you turn your thoughts;

21. It is the pen that flows in the parchment
And rivals the current in the pebbly stream;

22. And though accused by the unveiled it is trusted
Now acquitted, now convicted.

23. It inverts upon the paper heads
To confide to the tablets' hearing a secret;

24. Like one lovesick whom his passion has wasted
So he confesses openly his hidden desire.

25. I have described the virtue that ennobled a carpenter
And clad for it the hated robe of honor;

26. Suns of knowledge and stars of virtue
Have adorned the Iraq of Abu Nawas's day;

27. How many lovely scenes it showed us
Majestic, beautiful, alluring;

28. How many excellent deeds the doers of which
Severed kinship and turned from righteousness;

29. The sweet disposition and forbidding might
Of one who perfected generosity and persisted;

30. Necks bent in awe of one so sublime
Bow down before him submissively, willingly;

31. How profusely it has perfumed prose,
How abundantly collared poetry;

32. And poetry of glory that filled the horizons
Until, when the poets tried to climb, they became poetry;

33. And a mouth that abases the age with its flow
Mocking the daughter of Zarjoun with its flow;

34. I am amazed by one who won glory's reed
And never stumbled into vainglory;