1. How wondrous is love in its ways!
Speech falls short of describing its wonders.

2. It corrupts the pious after their devoutness,
And distracts a person from their pursuits.

3. Love is a fire that knows no dying down,
Leaving the lover utterly confounded.

4. Then it abandons the joints of the lover,
Igniting sickness throughout their body.

5. No friend of love is one bored by it,
Or who casts off the rope above the well.

6. One takes from it what appeals to them,
Without patience for its tribulations.

7. I’ve seen no malady or remedy for it,
Except what can be measured against love.

8. Asking about love one enveloped by it,
Is not like an eyewitness’s account.

9. None who have tried love and transcended it,
Except saw death in their trials.

10. And none who saw death in their trials,
Except a loyal friend to their beloved.

11. Look to the pious believer who all people’s
Tongues speak of their virtues.

12. After the prayer mat laid out,
Gleaming to the eye above their brow.

13. With a beard like a grove, so full,
Most befitting the curve of their chin.

14. They do not raise their gaze to the heavens,
For fear and awe of their Reckoner.

15. What their reaching hand fell short of,
Was granted to fate and destiny.

16. Beauty flowed over their brow,
Coursing to their temples.

17. Then it converged on their nails,
Vanishing before the critic’s eye.

18. Then restored it twofold,
The pouring hand fixed their beauty.

19. So beauty in them is double, and their
Nature is miserly towards seekers.

20. God created none other like them,
In the east or west of the world.

21. As if they are an idol depicted,
Worshipped by the priest in battle.

22. Depicted by a monk and adorned,
Then seized by the priest from the monk.

23. Both contested it bitterly,
Each gouging out the eye of the other.

24. And the priest rallied his followers,
Strutting in his scripture.

25. He protected it beyond what his hand,
Contained of possessions and desires.

26. Raiding his followers,
Like Kisra’s raids on his neighbors.

27. Ibn Abbad weeps, he indeed
Has virtues I will relate, no liar.

28. In his words a melody that rivals
The flowing of piercing pearls.

29. When he takes the pulpit, hands
Folded at his sides.

30. Woe to him, a mount to its rider!
God will not disappoint his pursuits.