1. Let my eyes cease shedding tears or perishing,
For eyes that do not see you have no meaning.

2. It is forbidden for them, if I saw the world through them
And you were not among them, to blink shut.

3. I would erase the blackness of my eyes after you, just as
A man once erased a mistake from his manuscript.

4. The hand of fate stole from me a pearl
Whose honor filled the corners of my heart.

5. So I made them into a sea of tears after it
Hoping through deep diving I might find its treasure.

6. But the sea of crying is no mine;
So whence can I acquire patience, and whence consolation?

7. You were saluted from a past whose memory remained,
And were ransomed from a single one whose virtues were double.

8. To him belonged all beauty since it appeared,
So it befitted beauty to be named for him.

9. And he was my hope, but with his loss
It was as if I were a name and he was the meaning.

10. Tomorrow his face was to me a garden of beauty,
So my tears departed and the branches leaned.

11. And my right hand became paralyzed,
So I will cushion it in his grave, hand to hand.

12. The world darkened and I knew then
That I had buried the sun in his tomb.

13. It was as if I were a bird whose chick
Was stolen from the nest until he got used to no home.

14. He saw it in the morning in the claw of a predator
Who sank its talons into it with hooked nails.

15. My soul ransoms you - how did you accept
The collapse of a house in which you were a pillar?

16. Hopes for us in you were severed,
And suitors whom we did not count were rejected.

17. And I thought well of the days, but they did not keep their word,
For good judgment is not for days to think well.

18. Would it not have adorned the times for us to gather?
So why did they aim for separation until we split?

19. We were as we desired, so O time, tell us -
Is it possible one day for us to return as we were?

20. Turn your attention to a beloved from whom you once glanced away
To look upon what befell that beloved.

21. And renew with that sweet tongue his speech
To ask about us - what is our news?

22. And O ransom of my soul make your hearing listen a time
To let us voice the complaint that came from us.

23. But alas, between all that
Were obstacles of fate that came between and we did not meet.

24. The passage of nights preoccupied me and the days' injustice burdened me
With what made me despair for myself.

25. I have a son whose soul was my consolation,
Yet here I am, nothing left of me but a withering body.

26.
Meanwhile, before him my face is made old by time

27. And my physique surrenders to my decrepitude.
I had hoped in my old age

28. To be greatly strengthened through him, but I only grew weaker.
So I worried for a branch whose fruits I hoped for,

29. And I did not see more beautiful than it when it climbed the branch.
It suffices as sorrow that I do not see in my hand from him

30. Anything but regrets, after all that can be harvested.
When he excelled in the battleground of rhetoric as a knight

31. And revealed to us in the arena of argument the thrust.
And he brandished, having given free rein to his high-minded son,

32. Who refused to stop short of the furthest extent of ambition.
His hand turned the pens in books

33. Until he shamed in the hands of writers the carved reed.
With elegant, beautifully-formed script he wrote,

34. With eloquent scripture that dazzled the eye and ear.
And he perfected in the prime of youth, appearing to us

35. To have surpassed wisdom while immersed in knowledge.
Fingers then pointed to him -

36. For him they came to praise virtue or be folded.
So when his peers refused, the days' army dusty attacked him

37. And time came out against him with its regiments.

38. And when he rose on the horizon of his prominence,
Radiant, while the night, like fate, had been overcast,

39. The nights of the full moon counted out the years of his life,
So they were equal, neither decreasing nor increasing.

40. The secrets of death came to him in his perfection,
And veiled him from us and veiled us from him.

41. An eye that befell us in scattered days
Neither looked at eye that befell us.

42. I hope for a propitious day after his absence,
Though the best of my fortune at his nearness has passed me by.

43. I became bound in the fetters of life miserable,
As if the days had left me behind with him as guarantor.

44. Had you been ransomable, I would have willingly ransomed you
With my money, if it availed, and my soul, if it sufficed.

45. But my life after you today is such -
By my life, it is a life I assign no value.

46. You slipped away from me like an arrow released,
While my back was bent over like a branched palm tree.

47. And there is nothing but resignation to God alone,
Though every hardship was burdensome and every slope twisted.

48. I was patient but did not have patience as consolation; rather
I saw the way of patience toward you as nearer.

49. Perhaps patience will earn closeness with God
By that He ordains rest for me in your vicinity.

50. In life I wished for your nearness, and I fear
For your nearness in the next life to wish.

51. Upon you peace of God, O best guide,
You remain in your resting place in a blissful meadow.

52. Still the rain of heavy clouds waters the earth you occupy,
Coming in a constant downpour, pouring.

53. By God, I will not forget you as long as the breeze blows
Or the doves coo in the bushes, or the thickets sing.

54. Tomorrow the bone of my frail body will decay into the earth,
With what the days had promised of you and what came from me.

55. So everyone who had listened to your name
Will shed for me a tear wetting his cheek.

56. When the caravan in the desert told our tales,
They stopped, walked in place, and awaited the ships.

57. I long for the cup you drank,
And one like me who was not wronged longs to it.

58. So if you obtained an extra amount in the cup,
Let that be for me the most soothing drink.

59. By God, I did not give you up to fate,
But entrusted you to the earth, guarded.

60.
I treasured you in the earth's belly as a precious jewel,

61. And enriched thereby a treasure for my Afterlife which suffices.
And I made you for me a sword, and if I were able,

62. My eyelids would have been for you instead of the earth a sheath.
You were for me a sharp, dominating blade, never ceasing

63. To gird for me a breast of honor or envelop me.
You became for me sometimes hands sheltering me,

64. And at other times your side was for me an embrace.
But ahead of me was a day of fear -

65. When it drew near, my heart fluttered with cowardice.
I protected you in the scabbard, fearing its arrival -

66. Perhaps that day you would become for me a fortress.
O my loss, and arrival of the death that was feared -

67. Wait a little, for the distance is diminishing.
Is it not insolence that you preceded me

68. To a destination we used to race toward?
You walked ahead after having followed

69. In my footsteps wherever we walked.
It was as if, when you feared the gravity of my sins,

70. You went forward trying through intercession to obtain for me license.
So the passage of demise assailed us with its troops

71. As we spent the night with open eyes, drowsy.
It is death - neither shying from propriety nor stopping

72. Nor releasing captives as ransom or heed.
It has no mercy for a son if one of mature age passes on,

73. Nor for a father who would be gentle with his son.
Had it been wont to spare the elite, a son of a noble woman,

74. It would have long ago spared the son of Mary.
A descendant of the best of creation - when his day came

75. The clutches of mortality snatched him, without delay.
Sending tears for him and sending words

76. That would anger the Lord have been legislated.
So O my sorrow and grief the day after he went

77. To be veiled from my eyes, O my Joseph of beauty!
You were cherished, but since you had no brothers,

78. The merciful earth made you its son of lower lineage.
Your father who cast you into the well, though against your will -

79. With both his eyes make him white from sorrow.
The Almighty will honor your grave; and if for Him

80. You have shelter that day, then mention us!
And tell me, an aged father whom you pained -

81. Treat him with pardon, O bestower of graciousness!
Perhaps God will destine our reunion

82. To the highest gathering place, above the lower gathering place.
Are we not a company who journeyed together

83. To an abode, as if we chased one another?
Between us is only a line whose points are adjacent -

84. Some preceded until we meet, or we lagged behind.
The earth is but like a book in which we are inscribed

85. By God in lines filling front and back.
It has a day of unfolding in which He will reveal

86. To creation secrets that were within it concealed.
O you asleep whom negligence has shut his eyes!

87. Prepare, for the living have presented the bier.

88. And O soul, patience - if the feet of demise
Have marched to us however they marched before.

89. Modes for the Owner of Days - when they change upon us
They devise for Him thereby diverse modes of artistry.

90. And whoever rides the steeds of time and its darkness,
Inevitably must tread uphill and downhill.

91. A deposit of a Lord which then He reclaimed -
So how much did He give, yet was not stinting!

92. And I am not saddened by His taking and giving,
Except that between a praiseworthy end and contentment,

93. One who entrusts a precious thing then swiftly takes it back -
He is suspected thereby of harboring an ill opinion.

94. Yes, I was not trustworthy toward it or
Faithful to it, though God ordained what He ordained.

95. But I hope for a glance of pleasure toward that
From an eye content with God - one who attains it suffices.

96. And I feel shame before God that I am seen
Committing against Him an act, thinking ill deeds.

97. And that I receive a tribulation then a blessing,
Yet I lack strength to bear both their qualities.