1. Is it from the ruins of an abode that your footsteps were stirred,
More barren and desolate than the dunes and the banners?

2. What rouses you from the remnants of a ruined dwelling
Are its landmarks, the spirits and the sands.

3. What a wretched neighbor, whose cooking pot you complain of,
When the cauldrons and furnaces are stirred.

4. The house that almost drove my heart insane,
When affliction from the memory of it stabs me.

5. When my heart recalls it, grief hosts it,
Straitening the chest and throttling the gullet.

6. And separation, when its phantom terrifies the heart,
Reveals some of what they concealed.

7. I am a man whom my Lord has enabled and honored,
From the matters whose essence is ambiguous and knotted.

8. I only live as men have lived before me,
And as nations lived before me.

9. Nothing prevented me from returning with the troops when they returned,
Blind to what they did around me, deaf and mute.

10. Had I wanted to return, neither the permission of the prince
Nor the records when they departed would have frowned upon me.

11. The keeper of their beds and those petitioning at night
Know me when situations get tough.

12. And those seeking their needs from the Sultan
When the Sultan distances himself from them or they are rebuked.

13. The rumors will reach you, if roads,
Breaths and steps remain safe.

14. Verily the outcast—if he longs for seeing him
Or praises him—people have already known

15. That the reliable one whose supererogations are hoped for
And the one sought for aid against darkness

16. Is the generous one from all people as they have known
Abu Sa’eed when bounties are counted

17. And the fortunate successful sayer
Is Abu Sa’eed even if his enemies object

18. How much grace have I witnessed from his traits
Not absent, nor are their words mere claims

19. Days, O days when time bit them
And when men wished they were defeated

20. Saying, “May Allah destroy them,”
And Allah knows had their feet slipped

21. Days of Sabur when their squares (fighters) were lost
Were it not for him they would not have settled a land or sought revenge

22. Since nothing in life do we gain footing with
Save forgiveness, bodies and determination

23. And some stumbles into sin we harvest
Which we unload onto them then buttress