1. The thousand sang on its branch,
And the spring gloried in its meadow.

2. The houses and the deserts leveled out
When night and day leveled out.

3. And the wood of aloes returned wet,
So today aloes were sweet for us.

4. I take it without fearing in it
Disgrace - and is there disgrace in aloes?

5. A pearl whose stuffing is carnelian,
Above it small pearls.

6. The steadiness of my cup is Abū Nuwās’s -
For the cup in his palm there is steadiness.

7. I shared it with a friend of sincerity,
Whose trait was loftiness and dignity.

8. His tambour has no patches on it,
And his sack has no holes.

9. He plays with a chaste woman in my session,
There is no one among them who is inhibited.

10. Examples among the glass because of it -
The people’s eyebrows and twinkling.

11. From it their wreaths and from it
Those breastplates and armors.

12. And between them everything we fancied
Of what the land and sea contained.

13. So the lion and the gazelle wherever they lodged,
The whale and the wolf wherever they stalked.

14. And there a horse and here a thousand.
Their engraver did not tire of skill -

15. In it there is no defect and no cheat.
How long we have lived this way already -

16. There is no dust on its face!