لولا مَساعِيكَ لم نَعْدُدْ مَساعِينا

Were it not for your noble deeds, we would not count our own achievements, nor would Mudhar rival the heights of supreme wisdom.

Do you remember a time of mine that passed with you? Someone like me is certainly not one to forget those days.

In the days when you met me with affection and honor, while my home by the river witnessed our parting.

I crafted a greeting for the awaited arrival, and it came like a star through which we were watered with rain.

And your carrying of poems from a wild tribe of Tanukh, verses that reject the very walls of houses.

A people of the tent-dwellers who flourished in the open deserts, pitching their hair-tents across its vast expanses.

A manuscript in the street of Jamil, in the hands of a trusted person whom I asked to return a precious trust.

How often I sent inquiries seeking news of it, yet my knowledge of the matter still left my thirst unquenched.

Then the Malikite Ibn Nasr visited our lands during his travels, making us praise both absence and travel alike.

He studied deeply and brought the jurisprudence of Malik to life, while also spreading the verses of the straying king if he recited poetry.

He spent his time diligently praising you with goodness, never absent from the pinnacle of glory whenever he was present.

I now explain my affair without relying on stylistic length, so that you may know the true account.

Time dragged on and its misfortunes betrayed me, until I grew weary and my soul came to curse long life.

I have transformed entirely, save for the gray hairs that overtook me, which refused to whiten my hair any further across the expanse of time.

I committed a sin while my mind was lulled by slumber for twenty years, but once awakened, it offered its apology.