1. What joy does old age have in sighs and sorrows?
Love is dead, there is no intimacy or confusion.

2. O beauty with languid eyes, be content and gentle,
If you refuse then destroy me in anger!

3. Alas! I have no regrets for the loss of youth,
Nor do tears of yearning flow from me.

4. Love once seduced me, now I have bid it farewell,
Rarely does something that's gone return.

5. Many are the days my seclusion shortened,
With a languid, sidelong glance from sleepy, made up eyes.

6. My mind robbed by the beauty of his face,
While he regards me with wonder like one bewitched.

7. As if Harut's eyes judge, to favor or wrong as he pleases,
Fluttering, quivering in their sockets,

8. Like the breeze that sways the stalks of cane.
I know not if his glance or wine called daughter of the vine intoxicated me,

9. As if his face were pearl water and his body finer than liquid gold.
You'd think it a ruby in its cup,

10. Or an ember set aflame with purpose and thus kindled.
This one's that, and Fate is the key to bounty,

11. Flower of life, spring of manners.
He is pleased and generously casts favors,

12. Death is angered when Fate is ireful.
Consider his traces with bounty,

13. Like traces of rain upon grass.
If Glory were told, attach thyself to a man,

14. None would it seek but him as its origin.
A lion, gallant, generous, glorious,

15. Wealth suffices him, to grant and gift.
Good fortune to one loyal to Abu Muhammad,

16. And say to one hostile, prepare for perdition.
His obedience is duty, if you disobey him,

17. You'll be firewood for Hell in your disobedience.
O you who praise Fate and hope in it,

18. You are no man who failed or speaker who lied.
When Fate clothes me in robes of wealth,

19. My raiment of it is choice poetry.
Poems that delight those to whom they are gifted,

20. And the soul's pleasure in refined living.
I never borrowed their adornments, nor

21. Did I pretend in reciting them in books.
They came like pearls in necklaces of gold,

22. On the neck of a beauty, or like rods of gold.
Sorcery, permitted, I did not string its beads

23. Save to raise my station above the ranks.
How could one hopeful of you not hope for wealth,

24. When you are the pinnacle of glory while people are the tail?