1. O ruins of affection
You have provoked incurable pain

2. The winds have played with them
And every adversity has worn them out

3. The torrents have erased their features
Except foundations and columns

4. And every downpour has watered them
With rain from the buckets of clouds

5. So the floods have run in them
Until they hid every open space

6. If we have become ruins
Desolate after loved ones

7. Yet their allure has not collapsed
It still seethes in my entrails

8. If I pitch my tent in them
A good, sweet, lovely time

9. I was among assemblies
That transcended all sublime

10. Known for glory, inherited
Glory from fathers

11. No blame may touch our domain
From protecting friend or foe

12. We clarify what is obscured
Showing it free of crookedness

13. We block heresy when it appears
With a staff, signs, and tidings

14. When a guest visits in distress
We give him best reception

15. So he comes to us unoppressed
Without demand or hurt

16. If he comes he fears no request
We tax him with no gift

17. To ask a guest demeans
Among the glorious ones

18. If one brings us poetry
No effeminate answers us

19. So they put in our grasp
When we grasp and confer

20. We take the splendid meaning without
Affectation in its course

21. The lamp was no makeshift
Think it not my peer

22. It's not like lightning was
That every wasteland nursed

23. Dews are not like suns
Nor every water pure

24. He is a shepherd who grew in a throng
Of camel and sheep herders

25. A throng steeped in shame
Like the mixing of messengers and water

26. If the seer saw his nature
The sight would scorn the seer

27. He knows not from ignorance
Everything, weighing things

28. He claims poetry and flails in
Every meaning, flailing blind

29. If he aims to fashion a rhyme
He thinks he inspired mine

30. Effortful yet following it
With gossip's ramble aloof

31. They aped passions and pursued
The course of passions and views

32. Their grey hair, if inclined to science
Knew not “k” from “r”

33. Warn him before foolhardiness
From the abyss of sarcasm

34. No troops have ever repelled them
Of hiding and revealing

35. Beware the lamp from a malady
That shames among intimates