1. Obey the caliph and disobey the one of meager skill
And abstain from frivolity and empty chatter

2. The caliph's eye is entrusted upon me
Caution has tied its knot with my knot

3. My overtness is wholesome for him yet I see
My conscience's religion for him hangs by a thread

4. So if I promise you to leave it for a while
I truly fear for you my treachery

5. Its occurrences turned and its onlooker
Is pretentious of that which he hides within

6. And a wine-bearer who enlivens souls with it
Its magnificent traces are beyond description

7. Emancipated in its lowliness for eras
Until it came halfway

8. They stripped the mask of clay from a fading life
The threshold of death, the living's environ

9. So it breathed in the abode when blended
Like the breathing of basil in the nostril

10. From the palm of a large-handled pitcher
Not to mention its beauty and its grace

11. It looked with the eyes of a sleepy drunk
And it glanced with the tales of the protective veil

12. It said, and it began to sway to and fro for me
Like the swaying of a walker on the tambourine

13. When I come face-forward my face intercedes for me
And the torment of your heart is the beauty of what's behind me