1. It is for God to choose from among His loved ones
A servant over whom He has control, as He wills

2. This is God's authority in the Sacred Territory made clear
While the distant one has deaf stones

3. Secrets of rulings He has veiled
In the folds of things - and what things they are!

4. The rule of manifestation has been made inviolable in its station
While to your Lord belong concealment and disclosure

5. Leave off from you the one whose soul inclines to wrong
And over him is the covering of distant discord

6. And keep company with people whose main concern is their character
And for them to Him in their spirits is the night journey

7. And beware engaging with difficult affairs, for none has succeeded
Who has been intoxicated by their glories

8. Do not neglect at the moment of your death, surely it
Is a state belittled by the mighty

9. Tear apart all creatures with His sword
And attend, for all contingent matters are vanishing

10. Die before your death through contemplation, remembering
Your Master - in this death is subsistence

11. And make Heaven the earth of your spirit's Sinai
For to the discernment of the sensible, earth is Heaven

12. And know that the command is followed, on
The shore of death, by an inviolable remainder

13. It is an absence, veiled by the veil, from the heedless
And beyond it after death is the meeting

14. And the believers who know their Lord
Died, but with Him they are alive

15. They have done well by Him, beyond others, so they are realized
Through witnessing Him - and they are the foremost in intellect

16. They followed the most prominent of the traces
According to His ordinances, humbly to Him going

17. They have magnified what His unseen has magnified
Of His secrets - so they are the learned

18. They have submitted to the One most lofty in His dominion
And to His command belong abasement and exaltation

19. This is the crux of a wisdom that refers back
To what my two white sayings have stated

20. The secret is to be feared, and providence hoped for
And to Him, glorified be His affair, belongs supplication