1. This morning over your palace I stand guard
So pray beneath your western wing this gloomy night

2. About your neck are necklaces like stars
That grace your sky, scattered, twinkling bright

3. So your earring avoids the Swan, each time
It flaps a wing sending it westwards in flight

4. And when your veil flutters open, never
Does the Pleiades fail to rise into sight

5. How often has your henna-dyed hand waved us
Goodbye - that bloodied hand still bloody red

6. Suspiciously denying all blame was yours
You’re the foe, so why were you “beloved” said?

7. Why does your cheek remain forever stained
With blood, your glance filled with doubt, unclear?

8. Had you wished, you'd not have tortured a doting heart
That in loving you found exquisite, sweet fear

9. Rather you'd have visited and cured him, for desire’s
Sickness itself is cured by union, by nearness, my dear

10. What’s estrangement but distance - had not
The raven’s beak left it wordless, drear

11. Endurance in you has finished its task
So rest, moan helplessly, whimper and weep

12. And tears flow from my eyes ceaselessly
Since my heart is ever wakeful, bleak

13. What have I to do with days whose tyranny
Turned my dark hair white with shock and fear?

14. The new crescent moon they finished before its time
The tender branch of youth snapped, no longer green

15. They have pained me such that if it pained a mountain
Its sides would have collapsed into a mighty heap

16. So if events have made me fat, my eyelids bear
In anger, scratches that scar and seep

17. And if I'm shocked that slanderers attack
My helper - I have seen things stranger and deep

18. One who will not trespass on his neighbor
By creeping stealthily like a cunning thief

19. A king who obeys God - from Him given success
Ever turning penitently, apologetically meek

20. Pleasing both friend and foe, rewarding, punishing both
Gentle of manner, fiercely strict and harsh

21. Well-versed in fate - though it shifts suddenly
See him rise to speak firmly at Time’s fete

22. Pure intuition spares him from wrong ideas
His words fly straight like arrows, not oblique

23. His taxes spurn to imitate other regimes’
Too noble to let souls think them a burden, a grief

24. When he smiles, joy lights his lips -though you glimpse
A glimpse, his awe and grandeur are plain, discrete

25. Silent, he can fill a gaze, and speaking fill
An ear, questioning and answering in beat

26. A necklace knit in a ruling order
Pearls shining brightly, nobles and elite

27. His mature wisdom needs no new experience
His own invention serves him amply, complete

28. If you invite his youthful son to great deeds
He races, ardent, generous and effete

29. Ambitions to rival the stars - and often a star’s
Brilliance follows his own, no higher feat

30. Features whose memory's trace seems to dream them
Making even eulogies seem too concrete

31. As fresh as myrtle, as red as a rose
As fragrant as musk - pure joy lies replete

32. When his tongue becomes eloquent, creation itself
Is seduced - praise cannot be obsolete

33. Free spending, not craving occasions or fearing
Lies - generosity can know no defeat

34. Those who bore grudges obscured my repute
Like wolves round Joseph - I was the wolf, effaced

35. Once secured in your good graces, fruit shook from trees
Not an iota lost, harvests all complete

36. I am your rusted sword - whatever you wish
You can burnish, tend lovingly, pare its conceit

37. How often when chasing a goal did my path narrow
Only for you to widen horizons, make all spaces replete

38. How bountiful, beneficent - when you watered with gifts
My plot of gratitude, so nothing was effaced or discrete