1. We disobeyed advice, so how can we avoid perdition?
We obeyed youthful passion, so how can we curb excesses?

2. We feared missing out on the joys of life,
Though the dissolute are seldom aided by death.

3. Let the cupbearers, the cupbearers bring more wine,
God bless your pressing them for more, O cupbearers!

4. Bring jars of wine and prepare the vine-juice;
Speak meaningfully and say “Give me some!”

5. The miracle-working Messiah taught his eyes
To resurrect or else destroy with a glance.

6. So he turned the cups around to distract from cares
Swiftly—no shame in that, nothing sinful at all.

7. When we rode the wineskin, we were scattered
In the regions of worries—all confounded.

8. You who find fault and argue it worthless,
Woe to you, in blame, alas, enough, enough!

9. Wine has made us wake up alive
And sleep subject to its rule as dead.

10. So if you ask after me, just ask
How I sacrificed; don’t ask how I slept.

11. I’m like a palm tree worn down by talk,
Except I never planted seeds.

12. Once I did not fear lions, though fate
Had crushed me until I feared jackals.

13. And if one day I flung a pebble
With the skill of my intellect, I'd hit a boulder.

14. Say to him with no weapon he should leave off
One who bared his canine and bared his blade.

15. I end my words of blame, enough, enough!
He is an ocean, and no envier can trouble it

16. If he spits in it, just bubbles on the surface.
Slanderers have tried to incite him against me,

17. But they incited me, so I did not lack incitement.
They provoked suspicion of me in him, and thought

18. They provoked him against me.
So he called me from Palermo, and I answered,

19. Though Syracuse was the appointed place.
I crossed the desert, plunging into terror,

20. Without him, I'd not have crossed the deserts.
In mountains where winter resides

21. Permanently, fearing no departures,
Every rising sun a mountaineer climbs

22. Aspiring towards it with steps.
It’s said "Ride off on a journey in zeal,

23. Not for your singing, but for death."
He swore and asked God to bear witness

24. To his oath—and died.
We shared the place of a passing raincloud;

25. I lived in its shade; I was its vegetation.
Ease there required that my day become Sabbath,

26. My sleep an unawakening slumber.
I penetrated languages of diverse peoples,

27. Ever a jargon to my hearing.
I failed in loyalty toward him, but without

28. His kindness, I'd have lacked all loyalty.
Then I greeted his face, beholding a shyness

29. That turns the living's cheeks to turn pale.
A bounty fulfilling promises; a sultan

30. To his custom destroying those hostile;
He examines disease and, when they say,

31. “The remedies are near,” cures are brought.
His open hands in the West are strange,

32. You see neither Nile nor Euphrates in them.
And bonds in God well knotted, so nothing

33. Remained of them but the plaited ends.
Of Quraysh, who are the mountain of glory

34. While others are but lowlands,
Deemed foremost in excellence those who worship

35. God—Exalted His Attributes and His Uniqueness!
Not those whose ties have died, while he

36. Gives life to the land of impossibility.
If glory took shape, he'd be its barefoot

37. Ragamuffin while you were the boot.
And I am he who clarifies evidence in words

38. Never satisfied by clarifying or repeating.
I have a nature the rhymes came to readily,

39. So if it chose, afterward it would leave nothing.