1. My patience on the harsh times
And difficulties that dressed me other than my gown

2. And unbearable traditions and folks
Who only know sluggishness and grudge

3. I found who cherish me, good-natured folks
Who will remain the comfort of the saddened after me

4. They carried their worries while I travelled like a stranger
Bearing my own worries and loneliness

5. They laid me on prickly pears and deprived me
Of fragrances, all rugged and coarse

6. And they envied everything I wish to monopolize
And came to me with everything I don’t wish for

7. And they set their horses loose in soft sand
And put a fence between them and me

8. Then they said, describe life gently
Despite life going against me

9. How can one who lives in a grave like a prisoner
Draw the image of pleasures

10. Lost in his life, not knowing
Which door leads to happiness

11. I have described misery in the best description
Of affliction and knowledge derived

12. And I saw people’s lives as hell
Casting gentle souls into flames

13. Show me prosperity and bounty
So I can depict to you the eternal heaven

14. The shocks of time leave gashes
In something harder than solid rocks

15. Can I spare from these black calamities
Blood cells and a piece of skin

16. Worries have consumed my heart and exhausted all my efforts
And so you see nothing in me but pleadings

17. Seeking sufficiency from my requests
Instead of my indulgence in abundant prosperity

18. This comfortable life does not please
A time filled with ill luck and toil

19. What can contentment attain from a soul
That craves more, never satisfied

20. Where is what arouses my nature with love pulses
Striking its flint of passion inside me

21. I complain of love and ecstasy, I
Am in need of love and rapture

22. I am tired of dryness in living, no wetness
Of a mouth or softness of a cheek

23. A rose from the garden of poetry I present
To my patron with a bouquet of roses

24. I own none more precious than it and I am content
That the best I possess is what I give

25. I crave an intimacy with the rope of love
Create it for me even with a false promise

26. I know not if my misfortune is in my love
Or if perhaps my bliss is in it

27. Except I feel a passion
You provoke, with closeness or remoteness

28. Do not be stingy or generous but
Leave me between ebb and flow

29. Then say, here is what you seek
Then when I say give it to me, refuse

30. A peerless painting, the lover’s stance
Between taking and refusing

31. Not for myself, but to have fun
Stirring some passion inside me

32. Don’t you wish that every soul
Sings your meanings, fascinated

33. Many a body wore out a genius
Who found no way to depict it

34. Cram your mind with youthfulness, there come
In it, of rhetoric, throngs overflowing

35. And you see him casually select
Hymns that bewilder the rivals

36. It flowed easily for he is like a torrent rushing
In a smooth watercourse, reiterating

37. The old man touches in his rhymes remnants
Of his recovered youth

38. And brings him back the nectar
In the bitterness of memories

39. He gives to existence beauty
Without love he gives no beauty

40. Immortalizing it, creativity in art
Surely includes the freshness of perpetuity

41. We have not known narcissism that pretends
Except when overwhelmed by pretenses

42. Neither the dryness of Hijaz ignited that soul
Nor the coarseness of Najd

43. It is an inspiration that love sends down
To the poets without intention