1. Stand by the deserted ruins addressing them
And make your moaning answer the rider

2. How beloved it became with those who have dwelt in it
And how many gazelles kissed it as a frolicsome place

3. The loved ones departed from its landmarks when
They made the howdahs for lizards to ride in

4. It became like the fear of a caravan, a most desolate abode
And it grew into barren ground after them and playgrounds

5. Indeed I stood there so I was a body present
Yet my heart was absent between the four of them

6. One day we bid them farewell while out of passion
With our fingers we poured down tears in torrents

7. You see their gazelles the morning after separation in
The mirage of the desert floating and pausing

8. Brightening the sights when they carried
Suns in howdahs and litters

9. The caravan departed in which they rode beautifully so
Our hearts became enflamed for their riding she-camels

10. White like the pleiades they never ceased being darling
To our hearts spending the night wakeful

11. They made us hope for union though they despaired us
Deeming them constantly departing and drawing away

12. They smiled despite the cold that melts its knots
Lest it become for them a piercing wire

13. A cold that melts but does not dissolve, and whenever
I joined it for a kiss, I was the melter

14. How much did I delight in them in seclusion and I feared not
An envious backbiter watching and observing

15. Days when time did not toy with us and we heard not
The crow of separation cawing in us

16. And my gazelles, dappled are their colors
And meadows of playfulness that were always fertile

17. Alas for days gone by! Alas for them!
Youth turned away and I gained no goals

18. No sooner did I hope for gains from fate
Except it surprised me with afflictions suddenly visiting

19. My mind never wandered in its methods of rule
Except I saw wonders

20. I never rejoiced in it except showers poured down
And disasters struck them as calamities

21. How many flashes seeming true to guess
Shine in the eye of truth as lies

22. Do not trust people in treachery and beware
Of those you see as peaceful yet they wage war

23. And turn away from them the door of harm and do not incline
To people as long as your life keeps its side

24. How many who trusted in people until the turns
Of fate turned against him in afflictions

25. Ask me of the world, you will find me well-informed
About it, eloquent in speech, a sermonizer

26. I experienced the events of the nights just as
I enumerated them, places of eating and drinking

27. And I roamed the lands until I comprehended in
Their regions easts and wests

28. And I prepared for the days abundant patience
And resolve that goes forth and a right opinion

29. And I rose in the horizon of aspirations touching
Suns that shone clearly and planets

30. And I clung to the most honorable of Arabs whom
Peoples universally admire and covet

31. A king who deems justice a valued religion
And views generosity upon it an obligation

32. And a young man whom if you seek in request of wealth
You seek a generous giver of gifts and presents

33. Kings are fortunate: his highness when
His fingers and palms they kiss

34. None of the pages of his writings marched
Toward his loftiness except the pages were defeated in companies

35. None in the sky of his loftiness passed by an orator
Except he followed him with a piercing meteor

36. How many insolent ones from him in calamities angrily stirred
A lion whom when the fox stirs his spear

37. The lions of the den become foxes
He left the enemies in war an arena in which his

38. Horsemen stir up blood and dark clouds
And he shed their blood in a copious ocean

39. The surging of armor clashed in waves
A sea that surges with waves forgiving and waterspouts

40. And destroyers and charging stallions and young camels
And he clothed them in garments of slaughter so they awoke

41. As carrion for the hyenas of the wasteland
In a battlefield in which he hurls the swords as flashing light

42. And arrows as calamities and stones as dark clouds
O you who established alive the clouds of his generosity

43. For people despite the flowing of the clouds
Listen to the words of a poet who became

44. Displeased with the nights and events blaming them
And calling you to reconcile them, and so reconcile their dispute with gifts and presents