1. If a house could speak of its dwellers
I would ask Damascus about the gazelles of its meadows

2. But how can you ask a ruined abode which knows nothing
Of its desolation or its friendliness?

3. Obliterated traces whose builder is wear
Unmindful of the processions of maidens above its terraces

4. White, when the breeze from the north blows
We discern it not, like its own sighs

5. O my companion, a shower has watered the dwellings of Julak
A rain satisfying the cisterns of its scattered houses

6. The porticoes of its mosque, the gate of its post
The watering places of its channels and its creeks

7. Indeed I spent with it a period of youth
When sport was verdant like the greenness of its general area

8. Before determination and its penetrating arrows
Had reached its targets, not attaining its battlements

9. Who will restore to me the invigoration of youth I enjoyed
In it, in Hims, and in its Mimas?

10. And days of sport on the Ma'arrah plain, flourishing
In its beauty and beside its sloping hillsides,

11. When I said to the beloved one, "Give me to drink
Of its wine or its cup, whether new or mellowed"

12. Ruby whose bright hue in the gloomy night
Replaced for us the shining of its lantern

13. And it was as if the redness of the wine, when it burst into foam,
Were a pearl set about the sides of its cup

14. So delicate it was, I know not whether the glass of its body
Was within its substance, or its substance within its glass

15. It was as if an ember had been kindled by it
Which had been fed on melted amber at its bushes

16. And had come glowing like the glowing coal of a censer
It guarded the hands of the drinkers when they grasped it

17. By God, the days of youth and its pleasures
And the time of its prime, and the gentleness of its temper!

18. Why does the white censure me for quitting my companions
When her own nature bids her seek out her own kind?

19. The light of dawn, when darkness is profound,
Is fairer and more beautiful than the gloom of its shadows

20. Passion soils the soul; would that I had cleansed
My soul of the defilement of its dregs!

21. And worldly ambition abases, while nothing, I believe,
Is nobler for the grieved heart than renunciation

22. Whoso is chaste will not be censured, and whoso follows evil
Will not be left by its consequences without protectors

23. Adorn your qualities with liberality, and do not reject
A world which regards you as the meanest of its chattels

24. And when you see the hand of a man extended
To gain the generous man's support, assist it

25. The best of hands are those which precede in generosity
A hand which bestows upon you in its own poverty

26. As for Nizār, they are all generous, but the most generous
Were the children of its Mirdas in former times