1. She played after youth had passed,
With my dreams that were most dear.

2. She tempted me one morning then turned away,
Patience gave way and tears began to flow.

3. She left me among the homes - how many
Were perplexed between the dwellings!

4. You tried to hide what the white days had afflicted me with,
And for the secret, tears make clear.

5. In the houses after them my eyes
Became two streams and passion a blaze.

6. So it was as if the tears were a lifeblood
Or a wound's purge or purple dye.

7. Or a torrent when structure was lost
And the dykes were betrayed by order.

8. Or an unlined Saibian cloak that did
Not trouble to patch any part.

9. And as if in the morning she returned
Her intractable messenger, the wild camels.

10. And swayed like ships when they enter
The green tides' dashing places.

11. And my neck bore the onslaught
Of the camels till the sand-dunes collapsed beneath them -

12. A cock-eyed Nahjali, or Babrah amulet,
Or trinket, or having some madness or arousal.

13. And as if the luggage and paraphenalia were
Like mirrors above the plains in their flashing.

14. Ships or sculptures or palm-trees from Shawkan
When their ripening dates were brought to them by the thorns.

15. And as if the high-stacked litter were a blaze
So above it the birds circled.

16. And as if the beauties were secluded
In the tents, the ruby and the coral.

17. Among them one, whose languishing has ensnared
My eyes through his bending, slender and pale.

18. Black of branch, white of face, gleaming forehead,
His breast pomegranates, his buttocks quinces.

19. Bow-legged, with a Maysan gap-toothed mouth,
Bent as camel's milk bends.

20. Wherever the gum showed from his teeth
Like the wormwood - and upon his skin perfume censed.

21. My friend said to me, and tears were flowing down his breast
From the burning anguish of passion:

22. "He who was made to drink love is despised,
For in the cup of love there is degradation for its drinkers."

23. I said: "The origin of passion is abasement, unless
There was no abasement in it."

24. It's no slight thing to drive the ram to the ruin
Or the white chickens, the delicate boys.

25. And to excel in poetry, refined like pearls,
Adorned for them in shells.

26. She deserted me in public and my reason slipped away
As endurance was overcome by separation.

27. She promised then failed to keep the time,
And instead her promises were filled with treachery.

28. Then she said: "Do you blame me for breaking faith?
The ways of girls are breaking faith and reversals."

29. So the fires of regret blazed in my heart
And I said: "Loss has afflicted me!"

30. But praise be to God, I hold to belief
And that is safety.

31. I am certain that the pure prophets
Cannot conceal what they were ordered to convey,

32. Nor did they hide anything they were commanded
Or forget anything they were entrusted with.

33. I do not restrict my pool, inadequate as it may be before me,
Perhaps the Qur'an will make up for it.

34. And I take the Shaykh Ahmad Qutb* as my chief support,
He whose affair partakes of the Divine.

35. The nights of his coming were for hopes
And joys and bliss the heading.

36. Sorrows and gloom have recoiled from him
And the possessors of prohibition have been silenced before him.

37. Before his hands the evildoers and the corrupt
And my family have the protection of his neighbourhood.

38. O censurer, assailing the Shaykh! Are you
Awake or asleep, toothless or ready to bite?

39. You ventured the ocean depths and touched the sun,
And returned when the testing was done.

40. So my Shaykh turned away from personal goals,
And time turned away from him.

41. He was not of the men of that field, my Shaykh,
For that field to fault him.

42. Rather, you attacked a group that had turned away before
And when they recoiled, they showed their decline,

43. Then professed allegiance and sought the protection
Of the Shaykh from what the young ones would bring.

44. And they refrained from opposing him, turned away,
And abandoned what they had been.

45. If the waves have continued in singing his excellence,
Then the sun has rivalled his light, and so the blind!

46. No idle wind made light of his wisdom.
Who cares for the passing of the winds of youth?

47. He attained the utmost attainment, thus he inherits
Those whom the heights of glory embraced.