1. To God I offer my greeting, her love afflicts me,
And I am neither married nor engaged,

2. Had I been one or the other on the day we met,
She who yearned would have come to me,

3. I say, while my eyes overflow with tears,
And my tongue utters wondrous amazement:

4. Oh, woe is me! A Giver has given her away.
No one after Him will give such a gift.

5. She traveled to Syria, though nothing drove her there
Except misfortune and ineluctable destiny.

6. By dawn those I hate had taken her from me,
While I remained, forsaken, without a friend.

7. I don’t lift my eyes to visitors,
As if I were angry at them or nursing a grudge.

8. Oh, priest of Egypt, I have a need!
See if she who is coming is drawing near.

9. Yearning for her face has cured me,
Yet the blossoms and the plucking hurt me.

10. The scent of sweet basil reminds me of her,
With perfume brought by the messenger.

11. A pleasant gathering from which her enviers vanished,
To which the slender sand grouse flock.

12. When we at al-Rawhā’ quenched our love’s thirst,
Even the jester envied us.

13. I saw Salmā as our heart’s desire
In days when we were bound by proper behavior.

14. You who blame me for loving her,
Can’t you see it’s against her that I rebel?

15. Salmā of the well-rounded hips, my heart, that madman, wants no other,
It refuses all but her.

16. The rider sang her praises for her beauty,
And for the likes of her riders sing.

17. She is no mortal woman, though you insist
She is a jinniyyah—the youth told a lie!

18. No, she is the sun made available to us
Despite the harping of the talebearer.

19. Had she gone out to the people at their festival,
Young and old would have prayed to her.

20. She is the wish—if her house were enlarged
It would befit ‘Amr, who long was a bachelor.

21. Can I make up for some of what is past
With an oath? Or is her estrangement obligatory?

22. Once I would not grieve over a shiftless woman,
Nor did the departing sadden me.

23. But for love of her I changed;
How strange that one who goes can change!

24. A comrade who does not greet the dew,
Claims kingship though he has a doorkeeper.

25. Like a covered pot when I visited him
In the abode of a king whose watchdog was a lion.

26. Stinginess and munificence struggled within him
When I had a request—which of them would prevail?

27. When their struggle had gone on too long
And munificence retreated, routed,

28. ‘Abbās met his visitors at daybreak
Weeping, while perpetual grief clouded his face.

29. When I saw stinginess was his basil plant,
While munificence was absent from his gathering,

30. I bid him farewell saying, “I am a resolute man,
Turning away from him and the likes of him.”

31. I single out as my friend him whose shadow stretches wide,
And whose friendship remains faithful to me.

32. I do not worship money when a brother’s due
Comes to me or a beggar comes.

33. Nor when bestowing bounty do I calculate—
For the miserly calculator is the scribe.

34. And so it is, by the Lord of a man
Who has no merit and seeks none!