1. Face your sky, o traveler, and see
Is there in your skies a star besides the wandering one?

2. That disappears from them and its planets cover it
So there is in them only the light of dawn.

3. As if the Syrian was created imprinted
On moving from a house to a house.

4. Thus you see Syria’s fate overturns it
Once with cold once with fire.

5. And in moving there is pleasure but not for us
In it except concerns that pass with lives.

6. We are the first who set out in every meadow
The smell of noses, refusing oppression and shame.

7. So effort did not fail us, missing
Nor did destitution change into ease.

8. But it hoped in the soul its rule
Of patience on the rulings of fates.

9. So maybe a genius revived for his nation
The dead hope and strengthened its burning resolve.

10. And for afflictions there is a cure that may come
From one who does not attack with bees and ants.

11. The Trustworthy lived as a nurturer among his tribe
Honored of face, free among the free.

12. And they concealed what they saw in the Maghrib about
News of an Arabian interpreting signs and reports.

13. You rose, o moon of the valley, on a orbit
From Columbian sky surrounded by moons.

14. And you were greeted by the meadows of the West looking
At you with a gaze of wonder and pride.

15. And you went answering in the East, dwelling
Not on the like Egypt and covering the bare horizon.

16. So you were its delight in every dwelling
And you were its knight in every race.

17. So rise, Trustworthy, and tell us what your eyes saw
Among foreigners and strangers.

18. And explain to us the West’s shock when there began
From Al-Mu'arri magic of ideas.

19. So the Thurya Club chose you after
It crowned your forehead with a wreath of flowers.

20. And a visit for you among the people of Canada where
None but flowers garlanded your forehead.

21. It elevated your status which none assumes
Except an Arab whose mind is burning.

22. For your day in the desert—may its morning bless it—
In its emptiness with the name of generations and times.

23. And days like it in the Hijaz, and in
Najd, and by the Euphrates the flowing chain.

24. You walked alone in a land which frightens but
The walker with an army of hardy horsemen.

25. With you a resolve that with it you revealed
Places not revealed by the eye of a flier.

26. Thus is lofty ambition, if it aspires
It measures out the spacious in strides.

27. You went down in it selling magic while buying
Life, so you were there both buyer and seller.

28. You shook hands in it with the kings of Arabs while revealing
The mother of languages in ruins and relics.

29. Yes, those kings! But in their tongues
Is the uncouthness of babble and jabber.

30. Their delicate shoes tread upon it
While the ‘d’ trails the hems of garments.

31. If not for the remnants of its supporters
No pillar of the ‘d’ would remain standing.

32. Nor would an Arab guided in its wastes
Or seen in its people one honorable.

33. May your Lord protect you, o mother of languages, and never
Return you to the jingles of rhyme and verse.

34. The Arabs did not cease in their East as Arabs
And the East shone so the dread of ill omens left.