1. Speak openly of passion, explain it,
Abandon innuendo, be explicit and write.

2. For passion's wont is not concealment,
And though you hide it, it won't disappear from sight.

3. The wasting of my body reveals my passion
Like tears that flow and give away the fool.

4. Who doesn't feign illness because of love,
With passions tears left unshed?

5. I'm one accustomed to youth and passion,
A comrade of youth - his state was unavoidable.

6. The hands of youth and passion toyed with him
While others hands did not play.

7. When I judge youth to be fire,
My judgment is most correct and proper.

8. I love one soft and delicate like a tender sprig,
Yet firmness becomes harshness towards me, his tortured one.

9. A cheeky Bedouin, a mischievous imp,
Used to ostrich riding and fun and games.

10. He loves ostrich riding yet doesn't love a lover,
And is averse to intimacy though in dire need of company.

11. I don't flirt though I'm no ascetic,
Nor do I shun all company and retreat.

12. My aloofness doesn't cause his aloofness,
Even if aloofness occurred, it wasn't warranted.

13. Rather, cruelty itself caused our estrangement -
For passion isn't wrested from a lover.

14. My imagination runs wild with fantasies of union,
So I extend my hopes like al-Ashhabi extending his spear.

15. Like the ignorant man whose empty hand,
He thinks, can catch birds in his deluded dreams.

16. A slender gazelle with bewitching, languid eyes,
Magic is the kohl in the eyes of the wanton.

17. And those eyes in their almond shape
Show the magic of a glance I'd not expected.

18. Before the sting of his cheek I hadn't known
Snakebites, only the scorpion's sting.

19. His mouth parts from his downy lip,
And pearls flash in the most delightful grounds.

20. It's not the lightning that steals hearts and minds -
Rather, hearts and minds are stolen by the flash of his lips.

21. He took up the wine cups and filled them
With the choicest wine, pure as the Euphrates.

22. I saw a sun therein, and another sun appeared
With the crescent encircling it, unveiled.

23. It began to set between his crescent smile,
Crossing the red horizon of his rosy cheek.

24. And when it disappeared from his breast,
It was as if, though it had set, it never disappeared.

25. Ablaze are his cheeks with the water of splendor -
Yet from him the fire was lit but didn't burn.

26. Beauty wrote upon the page of his cheek
A beauty whose flowing water never ebbed.

27. The hand of bliss and splendor nurtured him
With pure musk fragments from sweet perfume.

28. And my knowledge of convention is that
Books are not scented with silk.

29. No sooner did the full moon of his brow emerge
Than the dawn sun set ere reaching zenith at noon.

30. So for the stars of night - conceal yourselves For in the horizon of his brow shines the brightest star.
Rather, say to the suns of east and west - vanish!

31. For in the east has dawned the sun of the west.
The vast sea of eloquence, the ink well

32. Whose eloquence leaves rhetoric confounded and perplexed.
The knowing sea into which, but for his name,

33. Knowledge and wisdom are poured but not written.
The hidden jewel in the oyster shell of nobility,

34. The strung pearl in the most splendid golden thread.
The ingenious poet, the eloquent brother of wisdom,

35. Master of rhyme and most wondrous rhetoric.
My ear, my support, the most eminent orator

36. Skilled in the tools of rhetoric, explicating and explicating.
Whenever he declaimed in assemblies with brilliance,

37. The rivals hastily retreated in confusion.
No ear heard his words but woke

38. The next day lively as a polished pearl.
No heart was touched by his verse but became,

39. After recovering from its sickness, perfectly healed.
Magnanimous, for he made awe his garb -

40. All refined men are clothed in awe, I observe.
Noble, eminent, glorious and proud,

41. Robed in glory and pride, cloaked in honor.
When the horses of pride race in an assembly,

42. He comes on a dapple-gray and a roan.
He rode the lofty steeds until, competing,

43. Their hooves pressed the edges of the sky.
He shod his Thuraya so that as she walked,

44. The crescent gleamed unveiled.
Truly he was nurtured on glories and sublimities,

45. And glory resides in the wondrous, splendid nobility.
What need has he of the crown of glory?

46. Thus it was like shoes to him, or socks.
The full moon of perfection - and every full moon

47. In the west rises, like the curved sword.
If it didn't set in the west it wouldn't gleam -

48. To acquire light is its greatest goal.
Don't you see, at dawn, her radiance

49. Strengthens and weakens as she nears the western horizon?
That is only because of her nearing it,

50. Or distance from the Most Strange, Most Beautiful.
No fault in it but what it contains

51. Of nobility and glory in manhood cloaked in honor.
Whenever I saw nobility in manhood,

52. It was from this most noble manhood.
Whom dilemmas have tried and in turn saw

53. In his sound opinion the best training.
His habit is none but generosity and rectitude -

54. None but him made those his habit.
His wont is none but praise and commendation -

55. Apart from praise and commendation he had no wont.
And I summarized when I praised his excellence,

56. Deeming brief all who did not expatiate.
If extravagant in praising him, I've not innovated -

57. For I'm no extremist or hyperbolist.
Truly I've praised his excellence in a poem

58. That, were it not in his praise, would lack sweetness.
A delightful ode of the rarest odes,

59. Chaste though not prim.
Adorned in praising him, and imbued

60. With the choicest fragrance of beautiful praise.
And dyed in celebrating him and thanking him -

61. Apart from that praise it wore no dye.
She drew near though prohibited, for you're prohibited -

62. While prohibited to the distant stranger.
Brought to you though you weren't her suitor -

63. However could she be brought before being sought?
If you accept her, that is her hope,

64. And hers is the joy of attaining her goal.
But if you spurn - you, the most generous host -

65. She'll blame her luck, though your peer.
Make peace, forget earthly sorrows,

66. For the carefree voice of the singing dove calls.
Or isn't the son of Fathallah's beautiful poetry,

67. Praising you in the sweetest fragrance, like musk?