1. Perhaps my confession of my sins will intercede for me,
Though I despair, yet in that I am hopeful.

2. When the multitude of my sins would make me despair,
My hope and my knowledge that your bosom is spacious restore me.

3. The door of pardon is not closed to me,
Your grace provides ways and means to it.

4. I reproach my soul for the sins I have committed,
So my face veils itself in shame.

5. Yet I have a privilege in the wide plains of your heart,
A residue of love that remains when pledges perish.

6. I trusted in it until a moment led me
To a sin in which the embers of your eyes burned fiercely.

7. To you belong the good deeds while with me it is as if they are
Jewels shining in the necklace of time.

8. Yet I have an excuse when I make a slip,
For I have from it a sword with a blunted edge.

9. And I have a passion for enemies, though I am
Humble before the reproach of friends.

10. I am the sinner deserving of reproach, so judge
As you wish, I am listening and obedient to you.

11. Do not fear any estrangement from me in your love,
For your love is the truest thing my ribs have contained

12. And if my heart deviated from you by a speck,
It would expel it like a splinter from flesh.

13. So if there is no union or nearness, then let me have
Your pleasure, for I am content with your pleasure.

14. So my praise as long as time endures, O son of Muhammad,
For what you have granted me, remaining ever renewed!

15. O Abu al-Fadl, you are in your essence bounty, though
You have diverse meanings, yet from you they originate.

16. If your good pleasure does not save me by its gentleness,
Then I will be downcast with regret.

17. And I weep for bygones that have slipped away from us
Like the laments of doves moaning with grief.

18. I grieve as they grieved, but my tears
Flow while theirs are not yet flowing.

19. Nights of nearness while youth was fresh
And that mouth uniting us anew!

20. My life with you all is a future undisturbed
By the severing and separation of white hair.

21. In the sweet sands below Hiraqlah
Are race-courses we roamed between, lands we pastured.

22. Gardens - when the breeze stirred among them
It sped while languid in its pace ascending them.

23. In Alexandria beaches are for youth
Pathways for aims with roads intersecting them.

24. A land which makes even an old man like me
Return in it to the freshness of youth.

25. Who will grant me to enjoy in it a visit?
But obstacles have hindered me from reaching them.

26. I have a hope of a return I imagine
To be embellishment of fanciful thinking, and conjectures are deceptive.

27. It is no wonder, for destinies may be fulfilled from afar
And the youth, though remote, be brought near.

28. Whoever lives long in the world, happy chances
Alternate for him with misfortunes.

29. By your life, survival is not worth
The least of what the youth endures and struggles with!

30. A brief moment, it is like honey in the mouth of a nauseated person
- Sweet, but in the midst of it, poison drips.

31. A person rejoices in gains while certain
That what death contains is loss.

32. He schemes to avert feared ills while his life
Is torn apart hour by hour and he takes leave.

33. He feels secure from the blows of death while he has
Ancestors who died from its assault.

34. Kings who hunt game by compulsion while next to them are
Palace intimates and spears thronging the streets.

35. The life of mortals is an open prison
- For it complete freedom and confinement.

36. The soul has in such resignation rest,
Honor, but in people no resignation.

37. Whoever's hopes nourished his soul
Excessively ate them while hungry.

38. Nights have surely spoken in us and articulated
Advice which, if advice could benefit a person, would be useful.

39. But when a heart grows deaf, counsel seldom
Profits, however prolonged the talk heard.

40. Of the woes of fortune, none compares to the separation
Of homeland, which even makes the sympathetic friend a stranger.

41. Especially a land like mine, a family like my people,
A life like the life of youth.

42. Three things, if I count them, have no
Fourth to equal them in merit:

43. Joy, pleasures purified of major sins
Forbidden to approach us by laws and codes of conduct.

44. These impressions have left me, nor left in my heart
Places for them in its plains.

45. O people of my love, can someone parted from you
Return to what he was before?

46. After you I have a yearning that evokes our sorrow
And makes small in my eyes all I can do.

47. So it is no great matter if my teeth should grind for it
Or my fingers gnaw each other.

48. Peace be upon you, followed by similar
Peace and more dawns like it!

49. A peace like the breezes of gardens suffused
With light in their meadows, far-spreading.