1. O poet of the Arabs whose poetry flows
Neither mountain nor sea can bend its course

2. Remember the mouth of Latakia, my friend
When despair creeps in, memory gives you strength

3. Prince of dew, fragrance and heights sublime
Your virtues I love more than all pleasures

4. Your eloquence beyond gardens' scents
Your nature beyond honey or vintage wine

5. Our companionship these twenty years between us
Of highest manners, virtues and thought

6. We challenged the tyrants and shrank not
From their oppression, kept up the fight

7. When fate leaned heavily, you endured
And fate could not smooth down our complaints

8. We shared rule, you prose, me verse
Yours the plains, mine the poetry's universe

9. Kin not of clan or blood but of the heart
Bonds of souls and minds play kinship's part

10. Relations not measured by ages gone by
But by virtues and thoughts that lift the eye

11. Brothers of free souls, though strangers they be
The noble free soul finds his family