1. Now that the cold has numbed my thirst
And your absence has pained my remedy

2. My firm resolve once led me astray
To your nearness, and misled me into remoteness

3. I have vowed neither to raise my eyes to the stars in yearning
Nor to wipe away my tears with my sleeve

4. A yesterday of passions whose form
The Hand of Prohibition has erased

5. The cure for my heart would be to yearn for the watcher
On the day of parting when companions scatter

6. Leave them and those whom their beautiful redness bore
To the separation between the rosy and the white

7. I weep for them yet my tears do not find them
I flare up yet they are not in my heart

8. They were eyes that brought honor but they
Betrayed, so gazes do not fall upon the wounded

9. Indeed, the wickedness of livelihood and the paucity of nobles
Will leave me alone, defeated

10. I am thirsty, yet my guide does not quench my questioning thirst
The heat of humiliation is not cooled for me by water’s chill

11. They said you are angry with people, but truly
My anger is at their ignorance of the way to please me

12. Images that make even the souls of the dead
Move in their bodies with the limbs of the living

13. I cast my message to the deaf and lend
My sun-like gaze to the sightless

14. My father is a stranger among them in his own abode
Alone though multitudes look on

15. May Mutasim ransom you - not for your price
Named, though the meaning transcends names

16. They strive to reach you, though it was never
Meant for them to encompass you at your lofty line

17. And if you race the stallions in their confusion
Creation meets its downfall

18. And the white beauty-mark proclaims itself
By its clarity on the black cheek

19. Their minds fall short and the most treacherous of traitors
Fails in the feud to fulfill his promises

20. I am present for you whenever the narrators related to me heedlessly
News of you in your absence

21. You exaggerated in describing me, so I said a nature
I still know to be generous

22. The blind world did not see its face, yet I saw it
Though from afar, with my blue eyes

23. I used to show it, though it remained hidden from them
For the wealthy leave no trace among the stingy

24. I did not shy away when you gave me your affection
What can people whisper of my hatred?

25. And my friendship with the virtuous is proof
Of steady enmity toward my detractors

26. A lineage whose mixture does not distinguish between us
There the water mixes with the sparkling wine

27. And the affection of sons is the best that can be seen
Inherited from the ancestry of fathers