how beautiful its appearance was when it was covered by ruin and demolition like the gaping mouths of wild beasts heralding the end of the world showing you the consequences of its people and informing you of what will happen to everyone you see standing in it and making you give up seeking it after you had long given up abandoning it and i remembered my days there and my pleasures and the months of my youth with it with young maidens to whom the patient man would yearn and i pictured to myself their being under the soil and in the distant horizons and distant regions and the hand of exile had separated them and the palms of separation had torn them apart and my sight imagined the annihilation of that monument after i had learned of its beauty and its splendor and the firm ranks in which i had grown up with it and the emptiness of those courtyards after they had become cramped with its people and my hearing was made to believe the sound of the echo and the inspiration upon it after the movement of those groups among whom i was raised in it and its night was in accordance with its day in the spread of its inhabitants and the meeting of its inhabitants so its day returned in accordance with its night in the calmness and loneliness so it made my eyes cry pained my heart struck the purest part of my liver and increased the affliction of my heart so i said some poetry from it 
حسن منظرها، حين شملها الخراب، وعمها الهدم، كأفواه السباع فاغرة، تؤذن بفناء الدنيا، وتريك عواقب اهلها، وتخبرك عما يصير إليه كل من تراه قائما فيها، وتزهد في طلبها بعد أن طالما زهدت في تركها، وتذكرت أيامي بها ولذاتي وشهور صباي لديها، مع كواعب إلى مثلهن صبا الحليم، ومثلت لنفسي كونهن تحت الثرى وفي الآفاق النائية والنواحي البعيدة، وقد فرقتهن يد الجلاء، ومزقتهن أكف النوى، وخيل إلى بصري فناء تلك النصبة بعدما علمته من حسنها وغضارتها والمراتب المحكمة التي نشأت فيها لديها، وخلاء تلك الأفنية بعد تضايقها باهلها، وأوهمت سمعي صوت الصدى والهام عليها، بعد حركة تلك الجماعات التي ربيت بينهم فيها، وكان ليلها تبعا لنهارها في انتشار ساكنها والتقاء عمارها، فعاد نهارها تبعا لليلها في الهدوء والاستيحاش، فأبكى عيني وأوجع قلبي وقرع صفاة كبدي وزاد في بلاء لبي، فقلت شعرا منه .