1. Who will convey from me - if access is denied -
Kindness, as she ruled against me with her judgments,

2. And denied me half while it is her debt,
And spent without ending her life?

3. And she discarded my covenant among the pebbles
Upon the Preserver from her reins,

4. Where the kingdom feels reassured in its domes
And the world is folded into its tents,

5. And from her commands and prohibitions
Are suspended by the peak of the lofty or its milestones.

6. No tribe transgresses her rule,
Nor takes it past its judgments.

7. Rulership - if glory hears of it -
Will stand as my attorney in its dispute.

8. And the brides of dew were shy before it
So they lowered the covering from their veils.

9. After you sent it as motives
The torrents of flood collide in their accumulation,

10. Cutting across the expanse of grace
Between its precipices to its pinnacles.

11. Blended with the mention of you is its mark
On horses and camels above their emblem.

12. In your peace its verses are recited over your cups
And war between its whites and darks.

13. Every eloquent tongue thanked
Or the words of old in their inarticulateness.

14. It pleases you and angers the enemy
What hurts the limbs in their contraction.

15. They never heard the like of it for your glory
In the history of the world, neither before it.

16. Tongues envy it and doubt it
That never turned in their speech.

17. The fire of its sharpness flashed with your hands
And whatever feathers I had shot missed their mark.

18. Its rhythms turned back captive
Crying over their days for their orphans.

19. You had its bride unlawfully without dowry
Unjustly insisting on the unlawful.

20. Convey what I mandated from its listening
Kindly and what I gave you from its understandings.

21. For if it showed hostility, tell its sea
And the crescent born from its clouds:

22. Stand in the middle of its grove and greet alive
With love and reverence, O pillar of its pillars!

23. A message from one loyal in his affection,
Doting with passions consumed by yearning,

24. Pleased with estrangement and connection in it,
And with the opening and closing of palms,

25. Thankful for its rain if it rains for a day
Or is delayed for a year.

26. Trusting that the ropes of his covenant
Are to one who never wearies of its knitting,

27. That if days expand for me promises
Then for the straitness and modesty,

28. Or if the cups of his generosity missed me today,
Then I have tomorrow whatever I want from its abundance.

29. And that the debt of poetry is in his custody
A law he commits to upholding.

30. As for the protector of its sanctuary, the lion, and its prey
I have recognized the mark from its flags.

31. I took positions for it that show
What the path writes of its days.

32. And it saw what the elders wrote
Of courage and forbearance from you in its youth.

33. If it donated, you were the plentiful sea of it
Or it was in awe, you were the flames of its swords.

34. Or if it sought through you an end in the air
You made it beneath the dust of its feet.

35. You rose as a sun for the morning of increase
And a star ignited in its darkness.

36. If it dipped into generosity with its hands
You were disappointed though palms were in sleeves.

37. Or if the bowls of its channel were too short to reach
With an arm that threshes through its completion.

38. Or if it pushed you away in enmity
And cut ties from its wombs...

39. If a position made you a recluse
Sluggishness that cannot but have embers.

40. If the fates sat still from it
It is they that will stand in its rising.

41. A stockpile for the next day, its rule
Returning from you to its system.

42. There, so preserve me with what I took on credit
Rhymes I wore out in their bindings,

43. And secure for what I neglected from its rights
A fine that cools from its passions,

44. Thank for it the beloved of its meadows
In the days of presence and its leadership,

45. And do not - God forbid - be like its spiller
On the ground who did not grasp the strength of its binding,

46. Whom the cradles turn back from what it shepherds
From the loftiness of the high and its storming.

47. So pour on what this one imagined
With a token that steeps from its motherliness,

48. That the generous one hosts his guests
As much as ability allows honoring them.