1. Are you the baptizer of the heart's passion,
The resounder of the innermost being without trinkets or beauty?

2. Separation from loved ones did not affect me
Even if they departed without fault or breaking promises,

3. With specks that do not disappear in my eyelids
And an undiminished passion in my ribs,

4. O my reproacher! There is no concealment of the passion I harbor
Between the breastbone - reproach and censure.

5. Imbibe my tears on my cheeks flowing
If your drinking is from the water of grapes,

6. Sleep, for I have eyelids as pillows
For the length of nights, but what rest!

7. I have suffered such reproach as if
My hearing of it was not blocked.

8. You blame me for not casting at you today
Or entertaining you as my Eid [feast day] used to do.

9. But the reproach of the intimate friend in passion
Is the blame of the oft-forgiven for the effort made.

10. How many nights have I spent sleepless
With worries whether loosened or tied,

11. I do not incline toward her though she is departing
Nor do I bid her, “Return!”

12. She came like a mere vision to the sight
And left like the remnants of a farewell feast.

13. If some people want the morning for their night
Then my morning is an unending morning.

14. An evening that unleashed its afflictions
Upon hearts unprepared for tribulation.

15. O day of Ashura, how you lowered many sights
After pride and how you humiliated many necks.

16. O day of Ashura, how you repelled from me hopes
That had dwelt in me, never to be repelled before.

17. You made my life murky after its purity
And precipitated white in my hair over black.

18. Judge by the infants - how many mountains
Fate prostrated there between the corpses.

19. And how many wounded, unattended, torn apart
By either vultures or beasts of prey.

20. And how many stripped spears, unconcealed
And doves, slain, ungathered.

21. As if their faces were silver coins
Like stars in the black firmament of the desert.

22. They did not taste death until they smashed
With blows and stabs the vertebrae of giants.

23. Fear of punishment tomorrow did not leave
In them blood for soil or flesh for worms.

24. Each like pure gold you witness
In the midst of the riverbed, of unmatched merit.

25. Assailing the frenzied with unclenched fists
And hearts undeterred.

26. They knew no ethic but noble deed among them
Forgiving, molded only for generosity.

27. They came to you, oaths given,
In troops, spread like the night is outstretched.

28. Frolicking with their hands and feet
However they wished, like leaping goats.

29. Every bare hill trails them
Like an unfurled scroll of rogues.

30. Feeling the tips of spears and
Coats of mail, like David’s weaving.

31. As if the sounds of hooves striking among them
Were sounds of pounding by hands of the wind.

32. The doves of the valley weep for them
On branches, sighing with the breeze of solace.

33. I moan, for that is an acceptable roar from you
For Hussein - so keep enumerating like chirping.

34. I love you by Him whom the pilgrims circumambulate
At the House, facing the Throne, sought.

35. By Zamzam - whenever we frequented its waters
It was most fulfilling of all springs.

36. By the two sites of standing [Arafat and Muzdalifa]
And what they poured over the hurried

37. At the pebbles, of established ritual -
No act of worship welcomed but enhanced.

38. I am pleased to have died before you
At a station witnessed by the rejecters.

39. The slain - the courage of men is stilled by him
In the low ground, between abandoned and reaped.

40. Say to the clan of Ziyad, what predicament
Have you constructed with scheming and cunning?

41. How did you wrest the command from the brave
While the war still boiled with countless rogues?

42. You split the group of those whose group embraced you
While you were between expulsion and exile.

43. Who honored you after disgrace and who
Brought you near to safety after estrangement?

44. Were it not for them you would be meat for a cur
Or stealthily taken by one of short arm, impotent.

45. Or like the water skin, dry, lacking wetness
Or the tent, fallen, lacking erection.

46. Time has given you what will not be raised later
So one who strips timber therein flakes timber.

47. You have not drunk pure or been attached
To delight in times of ease.

48. You have not gained victory when disasters curled around you
Agitating with enabling and confirmation.

49. Time changed verdant springs for you into thirst
And substituted limited with preordained.

50. I said to the people, “Lower your turbans
In verification of the perishing of the masters.”

51. Mourn over him - this is the day of his death
And enumerate the days - they are for counting.

52. I have tears to match the rain and ample
Generosity though I did not say, “My tears, be generous!”