1. The pigeons come and go around us,
While all eyes are asleep to them.

2. They peck at scattered grains,
One pecks this, another pecks that.

3. There is no difference between us in destiny,
Except in minds and these words.

4. Death is enough as a destroyer of us,
So why loosen arrows?

5. And detain the tall, fading ones,
And the two-bladed sword is carried.

6. As if we were created for the caprice of death,
A drink to be enjoyed or food.

7. The distance of one whose lifetime passes
Morning or darkness passes quickly.

8. Nights pass like the course of Suhayb,
Dawn in them is a flashing lightening.

9. Their crime upon us is decay,
And their excuse to us is sickness.

10. Every day they have an onslaught upon us,
Why doesn't a year alternate with a year?

11. We blame the doctor though he is not guilty,
The disease of death is an incurable disease.

12. Thus is the life of a youth,
Behind him and ahead are equal.

13. What protects man from his demise?
Whether he settles in Iraq or Greater Syria.

14. With what forbidden sanctuary does one seek refuge,
If neither Zamzam nor the Sanctuary give refuge?

15. The beasts of the wilderness have a death place for them,
And a protection for them is to cling to mountains.

16. When the sand dune is tilted by storms,
There is no doubt that the summit of Thumama will follow.

17. Of what use is the length of your wings to you,
When the passage of time holds the reins?

18. Abiding tells us of departing,
And dwelling informs us of leaving.

19. Thus time has judged its people,
Dark days pass and bright days come.

20. It makes us taste the suckling of death,
And after a little while comes weaning.

21. It blames fearing the approach of old age,
As if the era of youth had a blemish.

22. Only the youth fears the annihilation of bones,
While the boy avoids it.

23. We excuse time because of the death of the wicked,
But why should the noble die?

24. Killing souls is forbidden to us,
So how is the unlawful permitted for it?

25. Sacraments abrogated with sorrow,
After them the years are counted.

26. By your life, man is but a phantom,
And the pleasure of life is but a dream.

27. O wise man! Be restrained,
And one like you should not desire the undesired.

28. Take it slowly. The stairway
Is slippery, to which people return.

29. And your habit is patience, if
Misfortunes shake their mighty quakes.

30. You bear their heaviness easily,
While a mule would collapse if it carried them.

31. If grief does not return the departed,
Then what is it but burning agony and sins?

32. Parting from a sister is the most painful parting,
With it the pouring tears Mixed.

33. And the loss of the young man, her defender, is grave,
For it reproaches grief, it cannot be blamed.

34. But the frozen entrails show you
That in the heart’s core there is a burning coal.

35. And if your eye erred in weeping,
Then your hands taught it clouds.

36. So shed tears on one buried in the ground,
Whose loss is mourned by the lovely and tents.

37. We have not seen a pearl or flower
From the earth whose shells and covers they are.

38. I seek clouds to water your remains,
And the generosity of your brother, the pouring rains,

39. And in it the trains of the breeze are drawn,
And from its meadow the running water is tapped.

40. For her loss, the nests do not sigh,
Nor the doves coo above the branches.

41. O Mount Sinai! Had I parted from you,
Clouds that heal the deeply wounded would have stood.

42. They would stand around my arena,
Until the pillows became equal to the cumulative sands.

43. It singles you out with late drizzles,
While for others are the pouring rains.

44. Had you been quarreling,
The unlucky fifth would not have prevailed among us.

45. And horses crowding with the coats of mail
Upon their horsemen graves of heroes.

46. But this is a state imposed upon us,
By our greeting of peace.