1. Beams of light flash from her, or are they glimpses
Of mouths that seem ready to sip?

2. My eyelids flashed from her smile lightning
And so learned how tears can drip.

3. By my father! He from whom comes my healing, though if
My heart is content, an ailing eyelid it still grips.

4. His mouth is his cup, his cheek the wine,
And his dimples, a garden where flowers uncurl their lips.

5. My eyes shone when gazing on his red cheek and white,
That gilding and whitening and tinting of hues eclipse.

6. Leave me be, loveliness, from this torment! For good advice
In love’s creed is but devilish whispers.

7. I’m dying from parting, when he went far,
And his love on me remains e’er imposed.

8. O messenger of my beloved, make clear by my words, if
By hints my meaning can be disclosed.

9. But the two moons have waned, though neither
Can hope to be full again from new eclipse.

10. In my youth I was impetuous, uncouth,
But age is that which disciplines.

11. The days have made me abandon the joy of living,
With hair white at my temples that now uprises.

12. I wondered, when thirty I spied, and youth
Sealed up at that limit collapsed.

13. The days turned my hair white with worries and cares,
And I failed my people; gone are rhymes precise.

14. Time made the hair of my head into threads
Tinted by blackness and by whiteness spliced.

15. And so my hearing yells for torment, and my eye
From all loveliness averts, lacking entice.

16. And I said to time, though submitting was my lot,
“I'm not one who fears when fortunes darken and gloam.

17. For me Moses has hands that brighten and light,”
Does God not exalt, with Ibn Ghawth’s praise, heights unknown?

18. A lord whose fire’s might—what structure
Of glory to the lowly does not increase and foam?

19. Steady of valor—named is the battlefield’s blade—
And the heroes in blood sport thrash and roam.

20. Perfect in merit, swift of fate,
He clothes himself in verse from which rhymes come.

21. No error defiled his house, no injustice
Clutched his hands the day hopes were tomb.