1. It is a grueling journey.. We walk it, and it walks us
Stride purposely, for destiny has strode purposefully in us

2. Did our thickets not get torn by the thorn bushes?
Did our valleys not get enriched by the downpours?

3. Did the whips, after bruising our cheeks
Wound us more than our own whips had wounded us?

4. It is as if we never took comfort in our lofty heights
And never slaughtered our rage during our squabbles

5. Never pelted, and our blood
Never irrigated, nor did our hands ever cultivate anything?!

6. Stride purposely.. for we have kindled our vigor
Kindled our bedding, kindled our abysses

7. You have endured us bleeding, spurting blood
Endured our provoked wrath!

8. Endured the excess of rage that mill us
With the grind of a mill, and the gush of a wound overwhelms us

9. Endure, for patience will spit us out
And a thousand dark nights call upon us

10. And embers watchfully ambush us
As our water-skins head towards them!

11. Stride firmly.. for this path is the most difficult
A wasteland and shrubs that make us soft!

12. How many withering plants have we used as pillows
And how many cesspools whose waters nearly tempted us

13. And how many shelters, whose branches shaded us
We did not know we took shade under snakes

14. Until every forked tongue dripped over us
A thousand fangs, blinding us

15. Then our famished one chews on both his sides
And licks his blood, while we walk naked!

16. We became ascetics, so spill our guts
To the ridges of our backs, and our past shadows

17. Pull on each muscle of our limbs
Until the veins cut through the veins

18. Until we return with no illusion disquieting us
No mirage in affliction coaxing us!

19. Stride firmly.. for how many oases have you dug
Whose shades colored the eyelids of our buckets!

20. We are destined for this sands, chewing it
Sometimes, and other times it chews our depths

21. We get roasted over it, so it quenches our thirst
With embers, while our buckets continually spill their tears over it

22. And we meet violent winds that slap us
Our eyelashes never interlocking over our blinded eyes!

23. Our exhaustion may near the point of touching
And our thirst drink to the point of choking

24. And we may live an era without seeing
A shade, not even of a flying bird's wing

25. And our shadow is wiped out from the excessive
Sun that clings to us as we cling to it!

26. Stride, O burdened one, for how wretched is a traveling brother
Who walks for the sun, while carrying shade and mud!

27. We planted its years in our cheeks
And plowed its flames in our resting places

28. And pushed its heaviest caravans
So it limped, the people's guide

29. And we never stopped since a child stood on a foot
Except to walk in the steps of those before us!

30. O paternal uncle Auf, may God water you wherever you tread
And quench the longing of those who love you

31. And bestow upon you the dew that graces our ribs
If it was in our power to bestow bounty in our resting place

32. And the rain kissed your mouth yearningly
Overwhelming us with its affection towards you

33. Indeed, whoever here asks about you
With a question that does not suffice our valleys!

34. With a quivering that kindled our pyre
And dripping that cooled our inflammation

35. So we are not deprived of your murmurs that foam us
Nor your roars that irrigate us

36. Nor did the winds that blew poorly visit you
Nor the valleys that dried out abandon you

37. O paternal uncle Auf, we were duty-bound by your legacy
To alternate with affliction in our rhyming couplets

38. We see the glint of swords before they are drawn
So the wound embraces before the stabbing wounds us

39. And we hear the silent sigh before the lips
Crack open, so it excites us and guides us

40. O paternal uncle Auf, we have hardened each limb
Among us with a killer aiming at his peak

41. Bleeding, to bleed our sacrifices
Melting with his flaming desires each day

42. Until he nearly.. while the voice of our mourner rises!
O paternal uncle Auf, shall I not tell you what

43. Fate has hidden from us, of what you forewarned us?
I tell you we sleep with half-shut eyes

44. And hand over hand give in
We are not afraid, but our fledglings

45. Are not familiar with snakes in our dens
So we surrender them blindly, and blindly surrender

46. To the fangs, so we curl up, while they curl us
And we conceal the sigh, burying it in the depth

47. Of the wound, to preserve the slumbering fledgling!
I tell you if our steps are cut short

48. We do not stop panting as hard as our caves could pant
And however violently the shaking winds blow

49. Its terror and ours, it does not weary our wings
Nor its valleys our valleys!

50. O paternal uncle Auf, we were not shortened as they imagined
No, our necks were not shortened, nor our forelocks

51. We are still enormous, however we desire, gigantic
As you knew, frightening our valleys

52. Blackened, alternating misery so it enrages us
As the wind alternated the volcanoes!

53. We were tested with days that tested us
They blame us for being complacent!

54. Their summer did not have crops to feed us
Nor their winter cattle to water us

55. We did not know in them a rising sun that bids us good morning
Nor found in them a shade that bids us goodnight

56. But yes, we were granted locusts in our pastures
That we gather in a harvest of our tears

57. And a scorching that blistered the dew of our vigor
With its affliction.. and emptiness filling our hands

58. And a craving for the raindrops that gathered
The panting of seventy generations of our sacrifices!

59. O paternal uncle Auf, our paths have narrowed
And the earth gaped into endless abysses

60. From them sprout tails beyond count
And the fangs of beasts in the millions

61. We did not stop observing them for an age as they observed us
We approached and they approached, counting each other

62. Until we learned what among us they fear
And they learned what drives us

63. Still we continued to stalk them in fear
As they continued stalking us in fear

64. If we wanted to grind them down
We would have poured on them our grinding molars

65. But graciously we see cause
For good to have its arrow pause before shooting!