1. May God spare you the onset of affliction,
And may you attain the most distant hope.

2. O master, every master is your subordinate,
Obedient to your command in good and bad.

3. And a scribe whose eloquence testifies
To his excellence in detail and summary.

4. Some are dismissed and find themselves lacking, but
You, of majesty and exemplar, are never found wanting.

5. Dismissal reveals what your past deeds have sown,
Your rousing traces on the path.

6. By God, your dismissals exhaust successors,
Just as the former’s faults shame his replacement.

7. Assertive in recovering what the other lost
And failed to attain what you grasped and held fast.

8. I am no master of humility or minister
Of joyous celebration.

9. I came yesterday with what was hinted
Of provision from the mountaineer’s den.

10. I strove tirelessly to seek it out
On the flat land and in the hills.

11. Until I hunted down what I was sent to find,
And duty is duty in famine or plenty.

12. With hopeful omens in the winds and the pilgrimage
Whose letters are auspicious in the beginning.

13. This is a familiarity that treads the path
Of saints and intimate friendship.

14. If you are slow to accept it,
Then this is a gift offered freely to me.

15. For refusing it carries disgrace,
So spare my messenger the shame of rejection.