1. The poor man endured until his livelihood and life
Were about to settle for him,

2. But alas, his darling came, woe to the time
When swords sheathed his time and shreds.

3. Father, I will never wed a bride,
O you whose nights were spent weeping,

4. And the ransomed people hope
To proliferate a lineage that stirs its movements.

5. So the poor man sighs while his eyes
Incline and his sighs increase through him.

6. My daughters, gently, do not add to his torment,
For some of its rings have been sealed.

7. My daughters, wait, I have none younger
To make our throne rejoice in itself.

8. My daughters, the wedding has become a disdain
To every sufferer of love and its firmness.

9. Its forms have changed until they
Reverted to loathsome forms.

10. Oh, yearning of my heart for the beauty of Dina
Whose traces aroused its verses.

11. The corrupters have wreaked havoc in it as if
Its purposes were obscured from their eyes.

12. Who will provide me with what some coffers contain
So that my darling responds to her ringing?

13. Then she inclined toward acceptance, she who
Knew her father, emptied his cups.

14. And remembered the days of happiness that passed
While their hours never joined.

15. Father, do not regret what you were not
Responsible for, or else its pitfalls.

16. The memory of your paradise, how did it not dissuade you
When you lived enjoying its bounties?

17. Remember it, how extravagant you were in amusement and how
Its paths to you multiplied.

18. Say it is you who are guilty, abstain from wealth,
Exert yourself and earn some of your livelihood.

19. And regret what you did not preserve, stay here,
Pray, for prayers do not benefit the miserable.

20. Do not show gloating toward me, I who
In amusement, when fits seized me, was led astray.

21. While we see each other in decadence, you see
Everyone defiled in his principles.

22. Woe to the hours of intimacy I did not know
Whether it was intimacy or its detriments.

23. Away with those amusements, how many times through them
The stumbler falls into his errors.

24. And woe to heaps of money I squandered
If I heard the rhythms of the one who strikes them.

25. And to a time that has passed as if
Its traits did not expire if its signs remained.

26. One day when we were on our coaches
Not seeing those without coaches.

27. One day when we took shade sipping
Cups of wine, uglier than his cups.

28. One day we wasted our time in corners,
For corners, my daughter, are its sublimities.

29. O flower of our life that has withered
In it, when the life of a youth is its blossoms.

30. And here I approached her so she shuddered
Before my eyes, his attributes and traits.

31. And there was Mahmoud, an empty space that
My comforts did not part from his comforts.

32. I had feared his absence but there he was
While absence was in his limbs like bites.

33. So I advised him: "Take heart, for in
This universe are those whose worries persist."

34. That the youth thought of all
You complain of, a matter whose diseases have slept.

35. I unsheathed over the evils of its swords
While evil amongst us has spread its habits.

36. And I armored myself with diligence to make happy those
Who walked with it toward distress and their tribulations.

37. It aims to foil the extravagance that caused
What is between us to scatter and I regret its wrongs.

38. It aims to erase the misguidances that
Have engulfed the cities and poisoned its breezes.

39. So assist it with a palm and be for it
Until it brings together its fragments for our religion.

40. And make it your duty to invigorate it
For the people’s life or death is through it.