يَدٌ لِوَجهِكَ عِندي لَو شَعَرتَ بِها

مَجمَجتُ فيهِ ضِراراً لي بِأَنقاسِ

A hand for your face I have, if you felt it

I owe a debt to your countenance—if only you perceived it—

I gathered in it harms for me in drops

In which I obscured my own injury beneath the ink;

لَمّا أَشَرتُ إِلَيهِ أَنَّهُ شَجَني

جَرى بِهِ العُذرُ لي في أَلسُنِ الناسِ

When I gestured that it pained me

For when I alluded to him as the source of my anguish,

Excuses for me flowed in people’s tongues

My justification flowed readily upon the tongues of the people.

فَإِن هُمُ لِلِقائي بَعدَها رَجَعوا

أَرَيتُهُم مَرَّةً أُخرى مَنِ الراسي

So if after it they returned to meet me

So if they return to confront me hereafter,

I saw them once again bareheaded

I shall show them, once again, who remains steadfast.

ما مَسَّني الهَجرُ إِلّا مَسَّني سَقَمٌ

وَلَيسَ بي إِن هَجَرتِ الهَجرَ مِن باسِ

Nothing touched me but sickness touched me

Abandonment never touches me without sickness touching me,

And there is no weakness in me, if you shunned me

Yet were you to abandon this abandonment, I would suffer no ill.