1. The sanctuary of beauty lies dreaming upon your bed,
With remnants of passion's wall crumbling over you.

2. The sun gleams like silk on your skin whenever
The day grows older, blossoming in its season.

3. Lebanon, O countryside of the sky and its lips -
In every inch of your soil an inspiration smolders.

4. You are not a forsaken country, though every eye
That cannot behold you becomes an orphan.

5. You have a moral duty to be lavish upon nature
And to precede and succeed all beauty.

6. So winter moves in, hard-boned, with an army
Of tender greenery swarming like locusts.

7. And spring has fruits that no light has ever ripened
In their equal - light without clarity of blood.

8. For you, youth is a generous branch whose boughs
In summer are fed by gardens and grafted.

9. And when autumn shrinks its veins,
Vigor flows in you even unto mourning.

10. Lucky youths nurture you like a blessed family,
A father spilling dew, a mother rising high.

11. No orphanhood can bring you misery through a mother
Or father, no orphanhood of an eye or mouth.

12. The true orphan is one whose conscience has died,
He who deals out injustice, not he who suffers it.

13. He's a ruler whom orphans suffer under,
Unjustly, and he feeds upon the bread of orphans.

14. Reproach turns shameful if given as advice
While a sly fox, when acting pious, is honored.

15. His tongue gives you honeyed sweetness
While he slithers from you like a snake.

16. Every man in power is two people:
A head to bow and a heart to loathe.

17. At every feast, his saliva flows
Like a mule's - its harm believed tamed when fed.

18. The sap of his dates flows from his gums
While his mustache above dries up.

19. He fears the whispers of echoes due to his weak faith
And sees lips as if they're mocking him.

20. From doors he has watchful eyes
And listening ears in the ceilings.

21. O Governer! What day will you feel shame?
Do you not know how you are and understand?

22. He's a guide whose food comes from the heavens
And listens to its secrets which he interprets.

23. The walls of piety are read upon his mouth, yet inside
His fiery conscience, hell blazes.

24. Religion is a shop where he sells false hope
And God is spoils among his gang divided.

25. In politics he has a conclusive argument:
It's wrong for religious law to be criticized and translated.

26. O bereaver of orphans, and life is short -
What does the Greatest Orphan teach you?

27. In every stable, a prod awaits you in hell
Whenever you yearn for the heavens.

28. He's a lover who never learned the behavior of passion.
When he feels it, his sinful sweat breaks out.

29. A tattered soul, famished flesh, a mouth that sleeps,
And blinking eyes full of crumbs.

30. Between his treachery and oath, nothing lies
But advancing a hidden desire.

31. So beware the wound of passion, for its injuries
Remain painful while medicine fades away.

32. By God, your era is beautiful, and so ours
Progresses in passion and advances in it!

33. The sinful heretic is an upright scholar
While the platonic lover is a sickly fool.

34. O critics, how sweet your time was when
Layla was chaste for us and Mary full of grace!

35. What more can those who blame expect to say
Except that he is infatuated with you?

36. He is a merchant, the meanest and cheapest
Whose conscience gives him away without stuttering.

37. A stone whose eyes have hardened the people to stone,
So people are cash and misfortunes are arrows.

38. Even the tears of the wretched are appetizing
To his heart, if there is profit in them.

39. O merchant whom prices rise with
However low his corrupt conscience sinks!

40. You will melt away in life as if you're an inheritance
In the hands of a squanderer or a single coin.

41. He's a poet - if he hasn't tasted the pain of passion,
It's enough that you have letters that ache.

42. What's poetry but flashy trinkets,
Ceramics that tempt or glass that deceives?

43. Life's images are colorful but the ones I love most
Are those preserved in the dictionary.

44. The true orphans are those the people spurn -
Not those the bereaved shelter and defend.