1. I will turn away from the signs of every critic
Men who insist on frivolity and jest

2. And I have not seen in the signs anything like his words
My heart clings to them like a shadow clings

3. And though I have not witnessed the people, I saw them
Drunk and confused, seeking one like me

4. So when they saw me they did not see what they imagined
For witnesses of the eye veil what is divine in me

5. And when they saw me they did not see what they verified
For they are not in character like me in nature

6. Their temperament is other than what I have tempered
And my temperament has not existed before me

7. For I am unique to the age, valiant and restrained
By law, verification, and utmost merit

8. I asked for a meeting between my eye and my witness
But who can bring about this gathering? Who can grant me this?

9. One day in Al-Qarawiyin I found the likes of
What rains bestow in the blessed time

10. I say with the eye of multitude in the eye of one
I marveled at the part which holds the wisdom of the whole

11. As with Adam when I learned of his essence
And he came in another form, in the image of God

12. And the image of what is in the universe of exalted realms
And what descends in it to the lowest level

13. I learned of my state when I verified my creation
If my mirror is that I am of the worthy people

14. So the sought said "You are my reality
For you are not, by God, of my people"

15. So I said to him "Tell me what you have known
Of the states of my heart, in your presence tell me"

16. For the phantom used to say, desiring you
And Abu Bakr ash-Shibli followed him in it

17. I bestowed upon him from my attributes some clothes
To take my place, so he shrank from that merit

18. And called out with apology and detailed words
"My God, what after having found connection?"

19. You burden me with what I cannot bear
And he did not know that I am in perfumes and heaviness

20. And that I am the one who gave existence its perfection
Just as He gave abundant from the little

21. And He gave freely upon a pious, generous people
And gave freely upon a people the stench of rot

22. And each has in it delight and desire
So in God's giving there is nothing of stinginess