1. A house has become desolate like your heart after Salma,
So which of the two dwellings is more misguided in its trace?

2. Can houses be of benefit without inhabitants,
Even if intact, how can they attain peace?

3. I cried over the abodes, so they were perplexed,
A young man watering dwellings while suppressing his tears.

4. My tears sketch out lines, and it is as if I
Am playing with them, so I erase the lines with a kiss.

5. I ransom you from a bidder of farewell who turned away,
And whose figure loomed in secret and anxiety.

6. We have been deprived, since your era, of the closing of an eyelid,
So how can we believe that your connection was but a dream?

7. Today, longing reached the two mountains from us,
Even if we don’t know the two mountains from early on.

8. When I see their fire, my heart wishes
That it had been ashes instead.

9. I was keen on life, and that is collateral
For whoever moistens with glances and is made wet.

10. If her glances give safety,
Then delay is until an appointed time.

11. Pampered with the fire of passion, warming
Forbidden with the water of innocence, growing hot.

12. I saw for her eye a bow and feathers
So I did not deny that there was an arrow there.

13. Every judgment is led to evidence,
If the proof is established, it establishes a rule.

14. We did not say Tripoli was a sky
Until a star emerged on the horizon.

15. Noble in praise, through it praise
So the best words are those which do not miss the mark.

16. Poetry feels embarrassed by it in critique
Even if it was proud in it with composition.

17. The soundest of people in turbidity of opinion,
The clearest in insight and the wisest in resolve.

18. And the most fragrant than the breeze’s diffusion,
And the sweetest than the first sip’s taste.

19. He loves spending except in obligation,
And refuses excellence unless perfected.

20. He does not crave quenching for his thirst
With a companion who suffers from thirst.

21. A noble one who precedes the summoner responding,
As if he had been notified before knowledge.

22. And excuses whoever came to him though there is no excuse
For him among the people if he did not sin.

23. Every dark night is chained by lines for him
Like chains if they came as suits of armor.

24. He imagined from the whiteness of the eye a painting,
So he came with the blackest of people in number.

25. It suffices you he is an Arabic poet of diction
Whose meanings are finely wrought as if Persian.

26. He handled curiosities from a heart
That unlocked the most complex of problems.

27. I saw you stringing orphaned pearls together,
So you were wrongfully dubbed ‘the Coppersmith’.

28. And not everyone is titled based on account,
Nor is everyone named according to worth.

29. Your poetry stirred poetry in my heart
So I stood up infatuated and sat down lovesick.

30. The shortcoming of the weak is considered a flaw,
But it is not counted as a sin against him.