1. You feared the likes of it, O cautious one,
while time, if it intends, leaves naught standing or fallen.

2. Someone consoled a heart that was as if
embers were embedded in it when it heard the news.

3. So I had no choice but to say to him,
“May your consoler be arid stone!”

4. How many a call to one long gone with no response,
how much reproach to one absent who makes no apology.

5. Thus whenever a companion bid us farewell and left,
they said, “That was fate.”

6. And the youth knows not why one youth’s life is long
nor for what state the life-term diminishes.

7. We sought but no success or gain,
we fled but no refuge or escape.

8. And these are lessons — no doubt — filling
our eyes, but where is one who would heed?

9. We complain of every disliked thing, enthralled
by love of this life whose days are deceptions.

10. And to cleave to doom when fate makes one its pawn —
that is madness that muddles the mind or drunkenness.

11. O killer of God, this time plants us
then reaps so from it comes benefit and harm.

12. When it would give something it soon takes it back
and if it delays a while it hastily demands.

13. A malady has infected House Qahtan till it destroyed them—
and by it Nizar tasted and Mudar was distraught.

14. After donning the crown and grasping the forelocks
and mounting the ostrich-like steeds and gaining fame,

15. after treating people to fear and awe,
punishing sin and pardoning error,

16. their parting leaves a musky scent, but if unknown
the camels’ urine would spray them with flowing gold.

17. And they trail the train of the caravan guaranteeing
that none but they deserves the insignia.

18. They said fate ruled not by weakness or pride—
so I said not every cause of misfortune is pride.

19. And longing for you after long estrangement deluded me.
He who harbors danger, danger lays low.

20. Your loss did no harm—the days still attest
that your merit among them was shining stars.

21. You brought riches to earth, and all mankind
what rain has never brought of beauty.

22. So you are the sun of morn for wanderers
and for those travelling in the wings of night your light is the moon.

23. If you meet death devoid of hearing or sight,
still you were hearing itself and sight.

24. And if bereft of some eloquent utterance,
still your habit was never bereftness.

25. They said show patience, shun force or pretence—
but patience itself is gnawed at from its edges.

26. If he who grieves and anguishes me knew
who I have lost and whose absence I excuse,

27. and how I stay diversionless, none
to replace him among men, none at whose hands I’m patient

28. and how after him no other quarter pulls me
nor do I have, ever, another quarter,

29. one residing among a people whose neighbor
eternally fails to defend them.

30. So in four things, the more they grow, the less they grow—
the less grows diminishment and the more they lessen.

31. Go then, as destinies have willed, wrested
from us, fear thereby maddened, caution crazed.

32. So for the hearts you gladdened there is now grief
and for the eyes whereon you imprinted sleeplessness.

33. What worth is life, now you have bid it farewell?
What worth is night, now you have quit its dawn?

34. Without you our prospects lose their brightness and hopes.
Ours are no plain, guileless days.