Ibn al-Taʿāwidhī (1) also sent him his ringing ode, which opens (2):
If your creed in yearning is the same as mine,
then rein your mounts upon the twin sands of Yabrīn.
And kiss that soil—had my camels reached its ridge,
I would have pressed it with my very eyelids.
My heart chants, alluding to the gazelles;
for my madness is for none but the fawns of al-Ṣarīm.
My melody rises among the tents, yet
I have masked it behind those wide-eyed deer.
By Allah, what that maiden of theirs embraced (3)
on the day we parted was hidden pearls!
Each wanderer who outshines her peers—
a beauty (4) needing no further adornment;
A graceful girl (5) in whose glance the moon of heaven appears (6),
shining between her forelock and her brow (7).
O Sulmā, if the pledges I left with you are lost,
then I am the one who entrusted them to the untrustworthy.
Alas, fair blades have no desire for the love of a man
who has already passed his fiftieth year.
Would that the miser (8) who withholds union from his lover
might learn generosity from Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn.
152 – al-ʿAzīz ʿUthmān ibn Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb *
The sultan, King al-ʿAzīz, Abū al-Fath ʿImād al-Dīn, ʿUthmān son of