تذكر أيامه الخاليه — Al Sari Al Raffa

He remembered his bygone days,

So no flowing tear would cease.

I say to the cloud with darkened edges,

A raincloud whose fringe is aflame:

Upon the suburb robed in gardens,

Let your downpours fall—and upon the nearby church,

On the rise of al-Jadd; it suffices us

Instead of dawn on the pitch-dark night.

How many an unadorned gazelle is there,

And how many an adorned garden!

And a beauty whose loveliness has not yet been marred

By the passage of its bygone years;

And one peopled by its statues,

When one day it stands empty;

And what its deacon offered the sun,

And what the priest hid in the wine-jar.

So may rain bless the playground of its gazelles,

And the moldering bones of its monks,

And a woman of bewitching gaze, born

To grace, fair-featured and healing,

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And a pattern of fragrant perfume on a cheek,

As a rose is patterned with ghaliya perfume.

Dwellings whose gazelles I hunted,

And whose savage lions I fought.

When the birds sang there at forenoon,

I thought the slave songstresses were singing there.

And if their shepherds returned at evening, you were moved

By the bleating mothers bereft of their young.

There I found my joy complete,

And shook hands with my cup there, brimming.

If, safe and sound, I see them, I shall touch

The soaring tops of their lofty corners.

And if I visit Utrujja's tavern,

I shall die, making a third with the wine-vat and bowl.

And my palm squeezes the drinking companion's palm,

And my eye flashes toward the cupbearer.

And I reach drunkenness before the first prayer,

And turn the reins toward the second.

And strike the earth's face with the die:

Either against me or in my favor.

So if you are a basil sprig for Paradise,

Then let me be firewood for the Abyss.

And if you call others to a creed,

Then I call them to abandon it.