1. Stop at al-Aqiq and ask the passing breeze
Does it carry greetings beneath its folds and pleats

2. Perhaps last night it spent by one in torment
So pillowed itself on sweet basil at his feet

3. The home of loved ones does your song now frequent
And clothe you in the cold of their garden's treat

4. If the caravan from you has now set its eye
In our hearts its phantom never ceased to meet

5. Time's nature is to contradict, it hasn't changed
Still lying in ambush between night and light

6. So woe between its dawn and eve
And anguish between its eve and dawn's first sight

7. To time in its judgements there's a gate secured
None can be guided to find the key outright

8. Meads and wines for its people ease the ache
All partaking of its cups in the darkest night

9. The bereft keeps turning in their grief
As the carefree turns in their days so bright

10. So the carefree enjoy the tones of their songs
While the bereft enjoy the tones of their crying plight

11. And my heart has been attacked by sorrows in troops
So patience was the best defence in the fight

12. Patience can protect a heart from a sudden wound
If it cannot heal the old wound kept from sight

13. I accustomed my soul to acceptance since my youth
So I harvested good spirits despite time’s blight

14. The soul is like an unbroken young colt
Fatiguing you to restrain its impulsive flight

15. If you do not fix your ways in your vigour
When older you'll be unable to set them right

16. Ignorance is like an illness taking root
Blocking Bucrates' path to find the light

17. My mind still has an old longing never ended
For an old love the years placed out of sight

18. A piece of land delighting all who glimpse its charm
And telling of fertile soil that will bring forth and excite

19. Pride in its towers and battlements
And triumph in its swords and spears upright

20. And I wrote a letter to the one I love
Its pages longing to meet with his hand's gentle light

21. If longing itself flew ahead on some page
It would fly to him on wings beating flight

22. I encrypted it with that with which landscapes swell
The best rhetoric cannot bring it insight

23. It’s enough for the wise but a hint
His caller can intimate without clear recite

24. Alas! The dawn brings no guidance to one
Who cannot see the illumination of its light