1. Do you know that from repulsions come affections?
Have you heard that from hearts come adorations?

2. You saw their faces and hair one morning,
A willow stretching out with its branches an udum.

3. They traveled suns in domes radiant,
And gazed gazelles in litters fair.

4. As if when they turned away and acted indifferently
They were to us sorrow then became joy again.

5. They were averse and turned away so I said to my friend,
“Were you wont to acknowledge the repulsion of the beloved?”

6. They gave rest to the heart though they departed, so I wondered at
A heart that remained intimate though abandoned.

7. Separation befell them and surprised their neighborhood
At night, so it escaped vigilant and jealous.

8. They raised the trains of slumber from their eyelids,
And freshened a glance upon it mulled.

9. As if, were it not for the knots of tears,
Collars would have dissolved in bosoms fair.

10. And, by my soul, the moon I governed,
My heart, so it became with him captive.

11. It hindered access and supplication to the beloved,
A separation built without that a fence.

12. So I released my gaze from the fetter of his beauty,
And left my heart with him captive.

13. Imagination returns to me and bends me
Without meeting, dejected and repelled.

14. No ghost bent round me, for I
Never loved the false visit.

15. And many a keeper of a tavern inclined to
My courtesy and was, as you see, famed.

16. She sent me from blondness a ruby
Collared with scattered pearl.

17. So I took it as a fire whose flame in
The palm of mischief lights the bottle a light.

18. Nay, how many a rent I mended with patches
Bearing from their jars saffron and ambergris.

19. Wandering from the range of eyes she made me love
The basil the dawn and zephyr blow and scatter.

20. The sun kindled on it the ember of her heat
When it shook out its mirage barred.

21. And I asked about its place of pasture in the dawn
Ignorant and supposed it the rufous deer.

22. Until I cleft the night into its dawn
And folded the train of its darkness dragged.

23. I reproached it with the tooth of my father Abu-l-Hasan who
Filled high places and I left it suppressed.

24. With Ali the lofty I transcended and there became for me
A decree that almost contests the foreordained.

25. A caliph extending back to a caliph, a lineage
That radiated till almost cycles.

26. Balanced qualities, a flank supplementing its defender,
Its defense fell short, my hand confined.

27. Yazid requited our poetry with spreading
Its traits published as an example.

28. With traits that almost bloom as flowers
And natures that almost stream good wine.

29. Poetry whose melody, were the singers to hear it,
From rapture over it would loose their hair.

30. And if it were existent in times passed
Jarir would trail behind it dragged.

31. And a script that the rill of limpidity does not please
As parchment, nor the meadow’s flower as lines.

32. If the son of Mukla saw it, the lobes
Would return seeing the free maids defective.

33. And an inference in problems with an acumen
That transcends and from which oceans pour.

34. He found his father traversing ways of righteousness
So he coursed them lauded and thanked.

35. That ascent to good fortune conveyed,
The ascent sublime left ascent in circles.

36. O son of him at whose mention the world overflows when
They remember his eminence which remains famed,

37. So that gratitude was as if its breeze
Glided over the meadows’ perfume wafted.

38. And indeed I thought poetry’s art and skill
Became musk while its composition camphor.

39. So look at my agitations and perturbations you will find
David chanting through your eminence psalms.

40. And imagine the verses a meadow blossoming
You will find meanings ringing birds.

41. Delight in the Feast of Fast-Breaking, you are its feast,
And its celebrator exultant and joyous.

42. So turn in the ink of eulogies meeting
What you lived in that ink enamored.