1. O revolving heavens, have patience,
Whether you are a plunderer or a tyrant,

2. You will perish just as you make others perish,
As you wear out, so will vengeance against you come about.

3. Misfortunes recur when they become extreme,
And destructive fate pursues its course.

4. The people of high position are but a cavalcade,
Their steeds are ghosts and their glory is borrowed.

5. We have hopes in life that are long,
We aspire to them though our lives are short.

6. To an ignoble man, misfortunes are slight
If they stand between him and pleasures - he has no excuse.

7. The end of his day is intoxication manifest,
Its beginning, the effects of wine.

8. One day, as we journeyed, the rain soaked us
With the downpour of a generous heaven.

9. We stopped at the abode of Hasan ibn Wahb
Though its drinking haunts were desolate wastes.

10. We met winter there and put on
The garments of dissipation when the shrine was near.

11. We ate the food of one offering hospitality,
There drinking a morning draught.

12. We vied in taking the wine-cup while it circulated,
Hastening the heated wine though it was fire.

13. That was no disgrace, except that I saw
Drinking to be their gravity and my levity.

14. We were pleased by the singing of Mukhariq and Ibn Khayr
As the flutes gave joy throughout the day,

15. Stirred by the zephyr as the soft showers
Descended together on their breath.

16. On a morning clouded with rain which yielded
Pilgrimage and visitation in the meadows,

17. It seemed as though the wind and rain conversed
Confiding grievances, excuses in their intimacies -

18. As though the turns of the Tigris when they gathered
Were bracelets or necklaces all together.

19. By my father and the father of the sons of Harith ibn Ka'b -
Time has surely hastened them on their way.

20. Fate turned away from the family of Wahb
And night and day took their toll of them.

21. It lent them the garment of glory until
They restored what they had borrowed.

22. They were not crescent moons to an onlooker,
And their hands did not flash like lightnings.

23. The wont of days among them
Was that their insolence ended in humiliation.