1. I remembered my homelands on the riverbank,
And longing's flame burst forth from my heart's depths.

2. I shed a tear which sorrow's hand had plucked,
And it fell upon me—a dripping lament.

3. Since the start, the days and my misery
Agreed that I should spend my life oppressed.

4. The fire in my chest cannot dry my tears,
Nor can my sobs extinguish my heart aflame.

5. My fate has become an ocean of sorrows
With a tide forever swelling my heart without shores.

6. I conceal my patience though troubles sting me—
But troubles can never defeat my patience.

7. My age terrifies me with estrangement, as if
It knows that I fear nothing but estrangement.

8. In the darkness of gloomy nights and their cruelty,
I am a laughing conversant, untroubled in thought.

9. I string together poems—fair maidens
Who emerge from seclusion in all their glory.

10. When the breeze of yearning shakes my inspiration,
Pearls rain down upon the garden of poetry.

11. I built towers, pulsating, raising them up
To peaks too steep for eagles to reach.

12. By their lights, nights shine as if they are
Winking at us between the stars and flowers.

13. When the sun glimpses them, they appear to eyes
As brides revealed in dresses of gold.

14. When flashing lightning fondles them playfully,
It startles them, suspended 'twixt fear and panic.

15. Raging tempests—angry winds—pass
Over each lofty tower named after a battle.

16. As if the hand of time falls short of them
And the hem of nights wanders lost in barren wastes,

17. I fancied that on a day when humanity
Had gathered around them, I was alone at the place of reckoning,

18. That they bore all of creation in their bellies
And returned burdened over the Bridge.

19. It matters not that they are powered by electricity,
Pulled along while so many above them fly on.

20. I marveled—how can a land be so crowded with its people
Yet continue to suffer such loss of life?

21. Those with rides envy those who walk,
And those who walk envy the rides.

22. A river along which trains pass through its depths,
It sleeps empty of worries, open of chest.

23. The blue dome related that riverboats sailed upon it
With lights like revolving planets.

24. When angry thunder roared in its skies
The riverboats answered it from the river,

25. Fearing collision in the darkness as if
Saying, “O thunder! Do not harm me!"

26. How many fragrant gardens has its breeze awakened,
Reviving a heart that was darkness of grave?

27. You see the gazelles frolicking there like the wild goats near Mecca,
Though their hunt is one of unbelief.

28. How many nights in their shade I spent
Weeping when I recalled my family.

29. How many times has a dove stirred the heart of one missing home
With its singing from atop green branches?

30. It and I are both strangers complaining
Of the nights' caprice—and the nights trifle with us both.

31. By God, how sweet is my solitude and my tears
Trickling the sweetest prose and poetry!

32. The soft-bodied, lovely ones—brothers of desire—
Endure a heart harsh and stony.

33. If you court them pouring out passion,
Marvel—I am drunk without wine!

34. They surpass wandering gazelles in their glances’ return
Where is the staff of the full moon to their waist?

35. They have the rising face of the moon—were it not for its pallor—
I would walk in darkest night because of their beauty.

36. Speaking to someone young, he melts like butter
And enough about the sorcery and witchcraft there!

37. O land elevated by the highest manners within you—
You have become the highest authority.

38. How many a scholar is within you like the sea, unleashed
One day from his pulpit, dripping priceless pearls?

39. How many inventors’ repute encompasses the globe,
Whose examples are cited on land and sea?

40. Men whose wonders are renewed each day,
As if in fate they surpassed even fate,

41. Who plunged into the ocean’s turbulence with the ocean submissive
And pummeled through the land’s ridges despite the land,

42.
In whom air’s expanse has been rent by ships

43. Without fearing in the sky the outcome.
They have ambitions which if possessed by the land

44. Would shatter gravitation’s chains and fetters,
As if He who created the land endowed it to them

45. In predestined days of glory.

46. I asked myself—perplexed by what this age’s city embodied—indeed, the miracle of the age:
When, I wonder, will the Syrian’s knowledge mature,

47. That he may glory in his high rank at home?
Gladdening the sorrowful and pleasuring the displaced,

48. With the longing returning even in old age?
I felt as though I was amid past, present, and future days—