1. Did a joyous feast restore you from oblivion’s names,
Or did haunting dreams make you their familiar?

2. Or has your soul been set ablaze with yearning,
And so with sickness smolders in its flames?

3. Or have your eyes been rimmed with kohl and stibium
From the searing pain of passions in their deeps?

4. Or have arrows lodged inside your heart, their plumes
Blue-tipped and brilliant, split shards from Destiny?

5. Are you the branch, the palm frond, or a lustrous pearl
Agleam within the wings of darkest night?

6. Or have despair and sorrow and weeping claimed you,
And you cling to none but love and its caprice?

7. Ravage my sanctum, or leave me be, for only
He who clings to the Shaykh shall win and find deliverance.

8. He is the fragrant garden, the melodious lute
To guide the wanderer, soothe the restless, and the sick.

9. His hands both runnels from the water-skin—each is
A stream from the bucket overflowing without cease.

10. No pining heart oppressed with sadness and distress,
No cleft on rocky crag where billows crash and break.

11. More generous than he to visitor and kin
When misers hoard what once they spent so free.

12. Not a tithe the ancients gave of what he did
When throngs pressed in upon him in their need.

13. As if the generous vied in generosity—
To him they came and went, a constant stream.

14. He is the drink that quenches thirst and hunger;
He rains on those decreed by Godfavorably.

15. Bless you, O Sheikh: may the Merciful never cease
To bless your abode and dwell within it happily.

16. Your nights are moons, your days a streaming sun,
You are most blessed, and in your footsteps, light.

17. Blessed be, O Sheikh, Blessed the manse that is
Your dwelling place—the saint fulfilled and verified.