1. I saw, and whoever lives what I lived, witnesses
Disasters, whose consequences are disasters

2. I saw the Nile in a terrifying frenzy
In which feelings and hearts are startled

3. An annoying din, the shouts have passed
To what is not desirable or good

4. People spend the night in anxiety and fear
Awake, their eyelids find no rest

5. If they hear the whisper of illusion, a sound
Perplexity stirs in their hearts

6. So answer me, you who love me, you who love me
And you, my love, are people today

7. You have become today, oh beloved river
Yet what place do you have in our cities, beloved?

8. They say, and I'm not one of them
That you have lost your fangs, melted

9. You rage though you need no provision
Evil natured, with no kin

10. You were, oh my love, once a god
Great in power, matchless

11. A god who scattered bounties generously
By which fruits and crops thrive

12. Ignorant pharaohs saw you as a Lord
Generous, who rewards and also penalizes

13. They have indeed lied about fate in ignorance
Lo, the ignorant one is the liar

14. And of what use is the praise of a pharaoh
For a river whose flaws are many?

15. He withholds when the valley appeals to him
Withdraws, shouts not, nor answers

16. And when he sees our singing unworthy of his ear
Streets and paths narrow around him

17. Are you a river or a stubborn mule
Impudent, lying, playful?

18. For whom are these fiery arrows?
Aimed by fate at the sky's chest

19. The rulers' logic is strange
And is there, my people, anything strange in Egypt?

20. A river that voraciously consumes bounties
At whose praise a preacher rises at night

21. The judge of religious law attends with a book in his hands
Its script, a strange script

22. He recites a proof, of which nothing remains
Except two crumbling lines

23. Absurd, silly myths and a covenant
From illusions, its pasture fertile

24. This year, every right falls
Called tax or tribute

25. It has transgressed, so the planets stumble in their orbit
And proceed, neither to return nor make amends

26. Before this day they were planets
Roaming what they roam of seas

27. Abdel Qawi wept, his tears overflowed
The tears an erudite man sheds in generosity

28. Egypt's grieving, sorrowful engineer
Whose talk falters, so he does not answer

29. I wished him as he roams every land
With scars of fatigue on his legs

30. Tents are pleasant for him, he sleeps in them
A sleep that gives no rest or pleasure

31. The two rivers have overflowed in a year and flooded
A pocket that responds to a lover

32. The Tigris appeared, overflowing and hastening
As a doctor hastens towards death

33. So the Nile rose, asking what distressed it
And for its tears, what eye makes amends?

34. Iraqis in the land of Layla
Whose souls have from kindness, sins

35. And beauty in the time of tragedy
Its radiant light, a flawed light

36. With the Nile disasters befall us
And mysteries and unseen things kindle

37. A fire smolders in the water's conscience
As our tears make the blaze roar

38. Fires from gentle trusts
And ambergris, if it burns, perfumes

39. We are drowning, neither welcome nor at ease
With a pact, all of whose cord is rotten

40. Overflow, oh Nile, and flood in the morning
He who hopes for its fortune, the sunset

41. Overflow, drown all our farms
For you have exhausted them and made them obsolete

42. Leave the distress in your lands
At which an infant grows old from anguish

43. Laughing people with the nights
If they had sense, their weeping would stab them

44. The reciter sings in my evening and dawn
Is that singing or this, we criticize?

45. The people have fasted from hunger and fasted
The wolf’s fast, restrained by traps

46. We call them yet get no answer
A free man’s call has no respondent

47. Foxes in their shrewdness, lethal
And the foxes’ death has kinds

48. Some fancied themselves or put on airs
And ended as fools full of vanity

49. When they rejoice at the days’ sleep about them
The day of their passing is near at hand

50. The dawn of celebration, the dawn of tomorrow is
Peace for a feast at which hearts fast

51. It is the flood casting people far
No sleep there, nor breezes blow

52. Ask Noah, if you will – ask him
That strange man will make you weep

53. His ark is your ark, and you
Are from the waves, your tear and lament

54. The Nile has come from a merciful king
And tomorrow its banner will be wrathful

55. I inhabited Egypt to tame my heart
To a life that is barren plain

56. I live in Egypt’s land because my house
Is there, O Lord, not this misery

57. Overflow, O Nile, drown them all
For I have no beloved in their meadows

58. I will prove against them in verse, that I
When I wish, will be clad in armor