1. Damascus, what beauty fails to pass by you
Exclusively endowed with it without a partner

2. It has fallen in love with you and you have captured its heart
Thus it describes you in every charming way

3. Glory be to the One who granted you. I bear witness that He
Has fulfilled and increased your Giver's gifts to you

4. So you have emerged to sights as the finest spectacle
In beauty and creativity from your Creator

5. Love took me by surprise, and you aroused it
Do I complain of love to you or complain of you?

6. You have surpassed cities and countries in lineage
From Qasyoon to eternity developing you

7. O daughter of one whose misery was prolonged fatherless
In beauty while he is long-lived ransoming you

8. His separation has aged him and his head turned white
Baldness, so you increased his majesty through your father

9. So it is as if he is a lion settled around you
Protecting you from the days and their events

10. O landing place of beautiful sorcery, did not
Hassan derive his sorcery from you?

11. You have returned from the flowers of the garden as a coquette
From dissolved to braided

12. It is as if the trees in you are brides
Touched with every twitter and braid

13. As if Barada's rapids are streams of silver
Flowing over a pearl string in your valley

14. And as if its pebbles and its flashing
Are a necklace of diamonds minted in your calm waters

15. And if the gazelle flirts with you, you smile from
Lips with the garden's flowers laughing

16. She offered you the crown at its rising
So you wore it of molded gold

17. And if you wear a black garb of the nights
Resembling the garb of the patriarch

18. Then the stars are buttons and the piercing of its falling stars
Were sprinkled upon you like minted gold

19. And if at dawn the gardens breathe
Engulfing you in amber distilled

20. O would that the birds visit while yearning
As if they were the poets when describing you

21. And you are like an island between two seas
Crashing into your coasts

22. And the two Ghotas while you are a shining moon
For a dark night that is sweetly dimpled

23. How many pure souls and noble spirits
Poured out to join you in the zeal of Yarmouk

24. Omar, whose horses' hooves trampled
The throne hall of Chosroes, dismounted to you

25. The Umayyads raised through you the greatest state
With swords of your sons as its foundations

26. How many suns whose light does not set
Abd Shams embraced in your club

27. Their hearts plunge youthfully to you
If not for Makkah's sanctity, they would perform Hajj to you

28. If not for the sanctity of Bayt al-Haram and its direction
At prayer, they would turn their faces to you

29. If they had not yet been, in the dawn of guidance
And saw your beauty, they would worship you

30. Did you unsheathe from Musa a separating sword, whose
Scabbard, if it were drawn, would protect you?

31. And did you hurl at your service with Saif al-Din
A soul that would be distracted to ransom you?

32. You remained the quintessence of Arabism when
Your children were seized by the tribulation of the Tatars

33. And the lineage of those native to you was cleansed
From the claim of my Syrian and Phoenician brother

34. Or have you blamed time and its corruption?
It has ended up afflicting you with every calamity

35. So you have seen from the auspices and misfortunes of time
The glory of the ruler and humiliation of the slave

36. And luck flowed and was not
Except with your happiest ascendant coming to you

37. I see Barada overflowing its springs
With tears grieving over your past

38. And I see your slopes like graves that have become
Each branch a lamenting mourner weeping for you

39. And if the winds wail and moan, they moan over
A sanctuary violated or an inviolable sanctuary desecrated

40. The right of navigation should be protected, yet I do not see
Your people have preserved this right for you

41. In Maysloon there is endless sorrow and regret
That they have suffered with the unraveled

42. On that day I did not know if they betrayed you
Or your people or their rulers deserted you

43. I do not forget the sky now that it has become
In August filled with its clouds weeping for you

44. And redness appeared in the clarity of its horizon
As if it is the blood's complaint of that spilled

45. And the sun of daytime exchanged the zeal
As if at noon carrying a bucket

46. They said: Forget the memories. Even if I obeyed them
I would never abandon it

47. I do not mean politics; it is but
A sigh from a wounded heart