1. What use is it to ask the four
When she, if spoken to, does not hear?

2. Foolish is your standing in worn-out traditions
Mute, not knowing speech or comprehension

3. So leave off standing at the ruins of an abode
Sheltered from changing winds’ directions

4. And hold back your tears from flowing
In a dunghill that won’t praise you, O square

5. God is your neighbor, have you seen homes
Whose contracts time has invalidated and tears dissolved?

6. And seek out a heart you cannot live without
And a ray of soul - if it’s absent, it won’t rise

7. And turn your worries, however dispersed
Your joy, with the turning of the winds they gather

8. A generous woman leaves the miser as if
Ibn Mama came down at his fingers with but one

9. She it is who tends the wounds of the sincere
If worries do not go beyond their proper places

10. With every enchantress of glances as if
She winks at me with the batting of a wetnurse’s eyes

11. As if she praises the dawn’s sun
Or she has put on the edges of her face-veil

12. As if the human race was placed on her
In tenths, inhabited by the living or small lizards

13. O you who flees engagements and their turmoils
I see him flee yet still be pursued

14. Take pleasure in the vizier, the son of a vizier, as if
You take refuge in the most glorious and protected bosom

15. A king ascended the ranks of glory but left
No hopes for other climbers after him

16. And his hands took hold of the noblest office
If the passionate were to touch it, they would not prevail

17. Fresher than torrents when they swell
Hotter than the hissing lion when called

18. The hero who felled champions in the fray
As if they were the stumps of palms pulled down

19. He left skulls in cunning scattered
Like fruit fallen from the shaking palm

20. I ransom him as he charges on a reddish steed
Fast, sound of leg, smooth-striding despite limping

21. The lofty camels’ humps and flanks are far from
Where the tame rein was placed on compliant wood

22. So that when his approach stood straight
A listening one seized news from a wide land

23. In a battalion like the sea except
It held no water save the sheen of armor

24. Until he dismounted to pray and we did not find
A lion preceding him in assembly there

25. While I saw him, fierce, felling, in devotion
Humblest of the humble, bending down

26. Greetings I give you, O Kisra of kings, a greeting
That excels greetings to the ancient Kisra and Tabba

27. O son of great ones, they made the platforms of their authority
The love of hearts with every awful day

28. And they substituted for lances in their sheaths
In war the zeal of each ferocious lion

29. Those who descend from the heights in a position
The passionate’s zeal for which in any place subsides

30. No man’s soul aspired to reach it
Except he died choked with undigested thoughts

31. There has come to you from far-off speech a lovely slave girl
Of beaming face, wearing no veil

32. A virgin - the first my verse revealed to the onlooker
And the first my hearing conveyed to the listener

33. From a loose-tongued poet, eloquent
Skillful in arranging rhymes and forming meters

34. So clasp his hands, you will get in the end
One more intelligent than those past and more talented

35. So let yourself hear, if aught remains for you after it
What shows to him the baseness of the craven