1. For the dignity of this magnificent status
No courage in words was of use to anyone

2. O you who blame the poets for their inadequacy
Woe to what the courageous face from the wretched

3. You rebuked them, even if you tested, you'd excuse them
None but the afflicted can excuse the afflicted

4. You denied what they knew of chewing pebbles
So for this, I made easy what was not easy

5. And the most difficult thing I tasked a poet with
Was profound ideas in the simplest words

6. But praising al-ʿĀṣid ibn Muḥammad
Is the key to unlocking closed doors of speech

7. I swear by the poverty which has spirits
In chains and bodies in shackles

8. If I were praising other than the family of Muḥammad
I would have raised them above the towering mountains

9. But I was impelled to praise his successors
Praising them, I come with the revealed Book

10. Therefore I expend beyond my capacity
Praising them as if I had not expended

11. And poetry next to Qurʾān, its light is hidden
Like a star obscured by a blazing crescent moon

12. They are a people, if they present a report from on high
They come with the truest support from a Sender

13. From every frowning face they made
The peaks of heads become pillows for the feet

14. Until it's as if their earth is an arena for prayer
Or rather, a smiling mouth, an incoming kiss

15. Those eminent in glories are of a rank
That with them, ascends above glories

16. They inherited the Imamate, present from absent
And handed it from last to first

17. From Ẓāfir, Fāʾiz, or ʿĀṣid
A house whose caliphate is based on clear proof

18. Your cousin bequeathed it to you after him
Your designation, like the Prophet's designation of ʿAlī

19. So be certain of the age which is yours, that it is one
For which you are the authoritative proof, and has not been shamed

20. And the ranks of caliphate are certain that they
Have prospered with your smiling face that gleams

21. Or do you not consider that Rajab in its continuance
After your year is a thousand years, incoming

22. It came to you congratulating and consoling
On my nature's behalf, an evil, unjust time

23. Its congratulations for the victorious treasured one who
Since standing for the victory of guidance, has not faltered

24. And its consolation for the righteous guide—but alas
My sorrow for him is a grief that will not dissipate

25. Verily in them both are mingled with the sweetness of honey
The bitterness of colocynth

26. And if I look upon the grief, it troubles
With its ugliness, the past that is taking me to the future

27. And if I consider the gift impartially
His excuse as a repentant exonerator stands

28. As for your wounds, O Time, they have healed
But after the rending of joints

29. O you who left us, and in our hearts is
A burning sorrow that has not departed

30. Perfection's lack, for you have decreed in
A number of months not yet complete

31. Condolences came to you before their completion
And blame is owed us if we did not hasten

32. If that brow's beauty were to reach maturity
Its beauty to creation, whatever matured, did not reach

33. Travel with your gaze, you will only find a hand
Dyed by a hand that did not let go

34. Or a withered cheek whose freshness grief took away
Or a garden whose irrigation did not wither

35. And if you want a witness for my words
Then the witnesses to my words are the people of that assembly

36. Among them is no man whom the bounty
Of Abū l-Ghārāt did not raise to a sublime abode

37. And for the abundance of kindness he denied himself
So he looked again with the gaze of one contemplating

38. My friend, I did not ask out of ignorance
How many askers about knowledge that they did not ignore?

39. Did the Shaper of creation, in the early times
Rebuild the rising of ancient times, at the first epoch?

40. Were it not that this status is the farthest end of glorious East
And farthest goal of one exalted

41. I would have thought the Opening was established among us
In the state of Jaʿfar al-Mutawakkil

42. Or that the days smile in the time of
Al-Hādī, the best of pious callers

43. And if I come to Abū Shujāʿ after them
It's because you're the first leisurely precursor

44. Like the sun after dawn, or like rain after dew
Or like the sea after the river

45. You revived with good deeds those past mentions of you
No knower of patronage denies the ally

46. And you rose in this time after earlier dawns
As provision for the Prophet's family

47. You took them into your care, and for them
Spread favors that encompassed every hopeful

48. You joined your pact in life with theirs
The bonds of al-Ashājīʿ interlaced in the sandals

49. A cause which tomorrow becomes ancestry, and you joined it
From them with the bond of a knot that will not be undone

50. You saw your father's kingdom a single string
So you paired with it another like it

51. And you preserved its noble office, and none
Other than you was qualified for attaining it

52. So the course of kings flowed, and you acted
Making enduring your might in the longest life