1. I pull her toward me if I could loosen her reins,
I want what's behind though passion lies ahead.

2. And though my heart in youth matches hers,
Far different am I from her flirtatious ways.

3. We both share passion, but hers runs free
While mine remains enthralled by love of her.

4. So conflict rages only between my forbearance and her impudence,
Between my sighs of fear and her unruliness.

5. She regrets her sleep beneath her blankets
For days of her past now gone.

6. And that ripe dates are fed to Babylon’s rubble
Where once I saw you, stony and unyielding.

7. A country that overlooks its people’s torment
And pours humiliation beneath its clouds.

8. Would that a land whose evil’s in its palaces
Redeem the virtue in its humble tents.

9. Yes, this Zawra’ though fairest hue,
Her elegance and reins cannot disguise

10. That her tail grows longer than her neck
And her feet raised above her brain.

11. When a soul happily lives out its days
Its bounty lies destroyed by vengeance.

12. I wished against her though she's the one
Whose flesh and bones are my own skin.

13. What can a soul gain from prosperous years
If harm is all it craves in time of drought?

14. Greetings to it but not to most of its people,
For others, glory's dust lies in its greetings.

15. I roused my will though my soul lingers,
To tell her of its concerns and determination.

16. And I raised up, despite my own disgrace,
Ibn Hurra's aid whose eye protects me while he sleeps.

17. He ignores all else when his friend calls
As cedars are hung with votive rags.

18. And he says: fulfill what you will by night, respite comes,
For the secrets of this doe hide in the dark.

19. Good fortunes comes to us but leave to people
Their Iraq, so long deceived by Syria.

20. How much untroubled peace, smiles,
Provisions spread out in the open.

21. Circles where love of knowledge links their bangles,
And hands whose treasures hide beneath their sleeves.

22. And people whose bodies were created
To revere your power, bone and flesh.

23. Seek it though success comes at the goal,
Going astray while failure waits at rest.

24. You can do little in Baghdad
Where your fortune is but a sip of its wine.

25. Mountains of Bani Abdal Rahim and their clouds
Are as you found them, concordant.

26. A tribe whose might cannot be spanned
For the days and nights grab at it uncontrolled.

27. They found you an ember and blew away
The winds until it was ablaze.

28. You were named after their qualities
And what you gained of their order and arrangement.

29. How many who envied you they provoked
To discontent and sickness of heart.

30. Your enemy they count as theirs, though he
Shares no legal tie or forbidden bond.

31. You lose no ally by leaving them,
Like an approved pasture freed of its bit.

32. What sharer does the king's leader have
When his secrets emerge from hiding?

33. A lineage of glory which grew with him
As nobility's essence flows in his cup.

34. With him it transcended the zeal of youth
To a peak they make way for in awe,

35. Eyes still perplexed beneath it
When aspiring up to dare the ascent.

36. When it rains riders he takes the rear
Hand on reins, though the lead was his right.

37. He followed, keeping pace with ancestral glory
Except its position demanded such modesty.

38. A boy before whom old and young stand
United as one youth in their elder.

39. When he speaks it contents them, and if he stands down
His words atone for not rising to speak.

40. And if a path to glory narrows,
His clever ways thread the needle's eye.

41. So it was but a mere headband its circlet lost
Its gems spilling as it tipped from standing tall.

42. Its midpoint was knotted, strengthened by
Its third in linkage and arrangement.

43. A youth who gathers wealth only to lose it
And bestows favor with no thought of gain.

44. Who counts livings as but for the day,
While the wretched plan for the year ahead.

45. Yet I've never known him to rest at ease
Or aid his own deprivation and lack.

46. He gives openly, wealth still in his packs,
While hands withhold though possessing no more.

47. Father of goodness, I respond to the call
Of affection for you, none else stirs its bolt.

48. And I courted the aid of matched pearls
Then left them, wandering free of restraint.

49. I turned people from them, loathe to excuse
My zeal for you was the seal on the break.

50. For them a fund that grows as it shrinks
And builds as it divides and splits away.

51. I remained a stranger, like a lonely dove
Solely for you, like the full moon apart.

52. Does doubt in me reign? Am I their deity?
Or is it their hero turned to other men?

53. The enemies believed me to be their prophet
Though her signs are but words from my speech.

54. For your dignity a ready bribe from her;
While the honor of others is target to her arrows.

55. Due reward for how you kept her rights,
And performed your duties by God and by reins.

56. As she cried out for your hands while fate gaped
To grind, not content she be striped of meat.

57. And a soul called you while strangling squeezed
Bent on severing her neck, binding her waist

58. You were rescue, not the sword, and like the serpent
That restored the earth its milk after weaning.

59. Your well-known gifts return renewed
Should I forget, neglectful as they fade.

60. If you're consulted you judge by her rule,
Bending to her sway, appealing to her arbitration.

61. But if she clings to you out of modesty,
You strive to gently end such propriety.

62. She will never lack you as refuge in distress
And a door when her goal seemed out of reach.

63. And days of celebration came to you with delegations
To tell of their continuity and permanence.

64. The noblest of its ornaments were conferred on her
Necks enchained by circlets of necklaces.

65. And the day of the festival selects its portion
Of its abundance and production beyond need.

66. For the feast, arrows of kings were appointed
To receive their share of its plenty.

67. It has the step of Islam and triumph tomorrow
In Paradise, coolness and peace.

68. So triumph in both and clench glory in them,
A bond no eye can see the point where it frays.

69. Fragrance touched whatever a hoof treaded
Or weighed down its surface pressing under belly and snout.

70. No soul can claim its motto preserved it
Or its fasting redeemed it in days to come.