1. If only my pen were strong, my words potent,
My hand would tire of speaking for my mouth.

2. You would see every afflicted one
Yearning for you, and every inflamed heart.

3. But my talent apologized for its inadequacy
In eloquence, by its lack of prowess,

4. So I stopped taxing it and went on
As time carried on at its own pace.

5. Are not my passions, though concealed,
Like white hair laughing in a close-mouthed grin?

6. My youth---you knew it by
A raging fire raised on a flag.

7. You missed naught but the gentle pining
That still brings me out of oblivion.

8. And I was imbued with burning salt, yet I forgot not
The sweet intoxication of chilled wine.

9. When sunk in sorrow I was asked of you
I said I was sunk in nobility.

10. And I am told, why do you not blame
One whose praise is my duty to proclaim?

11. Leave off talk of events now many,
For troubles are the fruits of ambitions.

12. And spare me describing what
Has poisoned faces with villainy's mark.

13. So that I may divert fate's turns, whene'er
I look, I see only darkness.

14. Good I know not! I rose from bounty
You had, and rose into bounty,

15. And lost it. I left Arab ways
And lost them, entered foreign ones.

16. My wares are my words, and most ruined is what
Of speech is sold to the deaf.

17. My craving is for dumbfounding---where is it
To dumbfound foreigners with embers?

18. Rather would that it lift gloom's veil
From the faces of the gloomy.

19. And I who am blamed, if I return
To what I'd left, am made a fool.

20. Do best, Abu Hasan, rise high
To reveal it, strike the peaks.

21. Ready battalions, son of his father,
With books, and hurl the sword with the pen.

22. And serve, by my kissing the carpet, him
For whom time has been a servant.

23. Show him in secret the state of his servant,
Hint to him, and sleep.

24. Each of us is your captive, eternally your subject.
So by your rule never cut short his thread!

25. O Ya'qub ibn Bilal, the turns of fate avenged themselves on me
So avenge me!

26. This, your father, is the sea that exceeded
My property's limit and shed my tears.

27. It trespassed on my sanctuary, which since
I gave myself to you, has been inviolate.

28. Every day it assails me
With a blow that pains me for being unfelt.

29. So in it I become a youth of yearning
Now like one grown old in regret.

30. You gave me what continues taking
From me while you thought it did not exist.

31. Know I do not say your hatred
In adversity is dearer than your kindness.

32. How many complainers and self-beaters are among us,
Drowning in it, and self-beaters,

33. And those enduring hardship unto blindness,
To which every rider comes.

34. Why am I pelted with every gale?
I am not 'Aad or Iram of the Pillars.

35. On my beginning this discourse flowed---
Would that I knew how my end shall be!