1. From your holy inspirations
And the aromatic wings of your spirit

2. From your love that awakened
The desires of the heart of existence

3. From your guidance that spanned
The land and sea, and wearied the talents of genius

4. From my prayers upon you at dusk
And at the radiant dawn

5. I kindle poetry, and it is my soul’s offering
And my ally against the defiant age

6. So if its signs weary you, my Beloved
Then my heart could not bear it

7. Forgive poetry, for it is the poetry of dust
Not yet cleansed of its earthliness

8. You are above it, for you are a prophet
Whom no praise but that of a prophet befits

9. O you unlettered one, most eloquent of people
You sanctified the unlettered

10. O you orphan, it suffices you pride
That God was your best guardian

11. O you poor one, except in virtue
You transcended every wealthy person

12. O you silent one who awakened
The universe with your blessed voice

13. O you helpless one who challenged a nation
That bowed to no passion but misguidance

14. Whose crimes had left it thirsty, hastening
To seek a spring far away that would quench

15. You quenched its thirst, and was its shade
So it came back to the straight path

16. While I, the thirsty one, whom the fires of sin had spoiled
And made me lose my guide

17. My God, how often I sought refuge
From my soul and its insidious devil

18. Whenever it whispered to me, I excused myself
With cherished hope

19. And when its devil roused doubts in me
I defended myself with steadfast faith

20. The soul is but an ember quenched
Only by the rain of your eternal love

21. So send down the rain, O clouds of lovers
For therein is the bliss of every miserable one

22. Behold the earth, my beloved
Quenched by its fill of crimes by man

23. It has bloomed by his hand with evil
And the garden of heaven laments for its watering

24. It has lost its morn and the night has clothed it
In a tattered and bloody gown

25. Whenever fate thunders, the markets open
For the wares of doom

26. It gives birth, then the offspring burden it
To perish by a giant and an infant

27. It no longer knows peace but as
A legend outlined by a foolish herdsman

28. I do not know if eternal life deceived it
Or it yearned for an eternal primordial day

29. The day its brother’s blood was spilled
By the murderer and the son of the eternal exile

30. And how strange is the case of siblings in it!
How they increased its ingenious sin

31. They tasted not the apple of Eve
Except with a morsel of its clay nature

32. Then they added to it cups of tears
Quenched from a criminal and an innocent

33. Like cattle they call out for their herdsman
While their herdsman is in the jaws of the beast

34. This earth - its East was created by its West
But it did not reward it with loyalty

35. This earth - its West murdered its East
And shrouded the Easterner with the Easterner

36. An Arab people from whom the non-Arabs learn
Every art of foolishness while alive

37. They deemed glory to be abasement to a slave
And death to be humiliation by a sword

38. They see life as a foolish dream
And faith as a misleading dream

39. They disbelieved in life when the dead believed
And lived like one bored and earthly

40. So if they speak of granite they soften
And from granite comes the softness of the Arab

41. Like idols by the sorcerers of Samiri
A university homeland and a destroyed fortune

42. A story that confused the storyteller's mind
A laborer who makes life and hopes for crumbs

43. Scorned by the dogs of the alleys
He prefers survival for the usurping killer

44. Under the claim of a fool and seducer
Inspired by wickedness are his sinful thoughts

45. And the night of drinking and the day of delirium
It is the paradox, O people, so blessed

46. Is the genius rebel
O Nile of immortality denied by Egypt

47. And spilled by the hands of foreigners
O people whose whites are slaves

48. And are tormented with the punishment of the disobedient
O people the wishes became too hard for them

49. So they are in life like the recalcitrant weakling
And over there is the Levant burdened by chains

50. A battered prisoner who dies by an unjust hand
And so Palestine is the ember of the East

51. Turned into a theatre for the Hebrew actor
And for Lebanon in the hands of the brilliant oppressor

52. Are the rebellions of a valiant Alawite
And for Syria are two painful screams

53. Annoying echoes, agonizing pain
And Iraq the wronged and Jordan the lost

54. Each is to his companion like a poison
Nations shattered by the hammer of a devil

55. And wrapped in its imaginary glory
And a sickly life tired by death

56. Moaning from its eternal prison
Where is the glory built by the Light of the Two Abodes

57. The orphan of the desert, the shepherd of judiciousness
Where are its successors, the prince of the poor

58. And where is the truthful, the heart of the Prophet
There is no protection for the East, disgraced by its people

59. While it is the East, the nation of Hashim
Behold the earth, my beloved, wolves

60. And wolves from libertine or devout
Filled with slaughterers who grew up

61. On lust and deemed the forbidden as food
And madmen who shackled the mind with evil

62. And unleashed the instincts of humanity
They have riddled the universe with blood and sung

63. Every melody of death that wept
They worshipped money, which is a mirage

64. And sought shade under its barren shadow
They deprived the peace of certainty and drank

65. Every cup of doubt was fresh
Whenever a prophet of peace came to them

66. They stoned him with stones of desire
If only when they deified the clay they refrained

67. From harming an ascetic and killing the living
They are as their forefathers were and grew

68. And they are the ones determining everything
Ignorant, they deified the ignorant and hastened

69. Towards the goal of no value
My patron, when calamities confound me

70. And you are my companion in my solitude and my rescuer
My beloved, enrich my heart beyond

71. Every beloved, companion or match
You are the dawn I awaited while the night

72. Darkened, so you erased the night with your brilliance
You are the theme of the poem and the universe its words

73. And your sweet name is within it like the rhyme
You whose remembrance is sweeter to the heart

74. Than the dew of dawn and the gentle breeze
You inspired me with purity in adversity

75. So I became like the ray of light
You taught me that if fate weakened me

76. To meet it with endurance and pride
The universe, my beloved, is but a Quran

77. Within which you are the verse of the Throne