1. The best of creations, be consoled for a brother
Of sincere loyalty, unstained by any pretense

2. A bosom friend, his affection true
The bond of souls, not merely flesh and bone

3. Be consoled for his loss by the Prophet's guidance
Muhammad, admitted to the Highest Company

4. God's beloved in His domain on earth
Upheld by revelation and by holiness

5. You were called Content to be pleased with all
You send ahead, remember and forget

6. Time's turns have given warning, in voices speaking clear
Announcing, though wordlessly, his death's advance

7. A kinsman he was to the Imam of Guidance
In love, intimacy and companionship

8. While bodily kinship means but little
If spirits' kinship it does not accompany

9. A sapling he was, robust, its branch
Well-nurtured from the finest stock

10. Possessing lofty spirit in hardship
Blessed in plenty, yet from greed exempt

11. On him time lavished favors like jewels
Scattered on bride's hair on her wedding day

12. If time's procession circles back again
Men's joy returns, as brightness follows gloom

13. The days' events are fickle, able
To bring mourning close on wedding's heels

14. With them, man's state alternates
From joy to sorrow, high to low

15. He whose hopes are pinned on worldly things
His heart grows heedless, light to darkness turns

16. His reason strays in its illusions
Deceived by tantalizing shape and guise

17. A fated end, though unforeseen, will come
On wings of sickness, when least expected

18. I yearn for him, though little did I know
I'd yearn, and would he e'er return my eve?

19. I yearn for one whose judicious soul
Outweighed all whims and vain caprice

20. The Aulads were the earth's bright suns
Lions, not mere sunshine warriors

21. On them, in time of dearth, men built their hopes
As on foundation stones their houses raised

22. So spur within you patience to deflect harm
For time treats man as destrier or as hack

23. Now mounting him, now throwing him in dirt
His body glorified, then abject, slack

24. Above the kings of old, the Persian and the Arab
Your lineage rose, prevailing, keeping pact

25. He who sees not your love as duty bound
Has failed to pay the five-fold ritual act

26. All people are your ransom, yes, against
A spurning foe, of severing strike expert

27. Mankind, from suckling babe to aged soul
Are but two spans, or three or four or five

28.
The first awaits the last's impending fall

29. By time confined, with no escape, no shift

30. Till death requitals come to claim them all
No notion have the people of its drift

31. Their resurrection after this mortality
For Jinn-kind and for humankind alike

32. Their voices muted in timidity
None speaks except in faintest whisper's sigh

33. Death's suitor, his address equals the stammer
Of blind man proposing at a wedding rite

34. He rises high, prevailing o'er men's souls
Not heeding those who from their thrones are hurled

35. Nights toy with man like pen on parchment scrawls
In blessings nurturing, then misery and blight

36. With favors rearing one of haughty air
Weaned by affliction and by bitter plight

37.
Joys it pursues with tribulations

38. And follows health with blows and loss
Perplexed in it the free man wanders ever

39. As its exorbitant usury wears him quite
His body wearied through eternity

40. While rest is but in: 'Be, and it is'
In it his soul is duped by wishful thinking

41. Though death comes, it slips from memory
Its shifts make him forget what comes ahead

42. While the beguiled optimist is thrown off guard
It wraps him in a mantle of illusion

43. The sweetmeat and the dress bring oversight

44. But God has saved the Leader of Guidance
So worldly giving cannot mean stint or dearth

45. O Pole Divine, all being circles you
Your servants, mighty lords and slaves abased

46.
Your permanence, our victory and our wealth

47. Each dusk and dawn, to you our spirits cleave
However world's ups vary, while you are there

48. In dearth and plenty, we know no infirmity

49. Who trades with time, yet spurns its course
Gains only loss, no profit from its shift

50. All resigned to God, so do not grieve
Though twenty gone, or thirty, or a fifth