1. How can there be tranquility in moving from this world to a home,
When the last of playfulness is the beginning of sorrow?

2. The joy of days has changed and their beauty has faded;
That fair scene has lost its radiance.

3. And hopes had their lives shortened by calamities -
So I long neither for family nor homeland.

4. It is as if the earth never displayed her finery,
Nor did the warblers ever trill in the branches.

5. The abodes of glory are devoid of love and passion -
None pass by them except over ruins.

6. All creatures end up in oblivion -
Yet You persist in making them fruitful, but for whom?

7. People are of two kinds - except for the vigilant and prudent
Who saw the truth with an astute and perceptive intellect.

8. One struggles in the seas of frailty, drowning him -
Another battling the oceans of ignorance and tribulations.

9. How strange is man in his changing state -
Pleased at times with his nights and in times of sadness.

10. He is blind to what is manifest though he has sight -
And at times he hears though he has no ears.

11. A corpse he's counted among the living, his senses numb -
Merely a body wrapped in its shroud.

12. Loyalty is due to the forgetful, not the loyal -
And which era absent of blame has been treasonous?

13. Every moment has a resolve or a consequence -
A cargo on a ship steered by its wisdom, rough.

14. Time examines what you harbor in secret -
Go! You are not entrusted with any confidentiality.

15. You've filled your hands with suppositions you've struggled for -
Yet naught is in your hands but fancy and conjecture.

16. I have granted you the howdah and litter -
Pliant to the breeze and the doe-eyed beauty.

17. Yet I long not for an encampment or shady glens -
Nor find peace at your hillsides or mountain refuges.

18. It suffices, the youth I spent and lavished
On the days of passion, openly and in secret.

19. Now I have freed my heart of the excess of its craze -
And reason returns, untethered and without bridle.

20. Love that which profits you; do not regret thereafter -
And do not end up in loss or being duped.

21. O you who perish! My soul has left my body -
So how can you reckon that the body remains without the soul?

22. I exiled this land from my sight - gather it
Gently, rejected - neither vast of breast nor generous.

23. For to me, its surface seems morose, unpleasant -
And its sweet Nile like a rough, contaminated skin.

24. My wakefulness has torn my eyes with sorrow -
No eyelid is stitched over their bloodshot bleariness.

25. O intimate of the deserted encampments, be its neighbor
When lifeless; o solitude of the inhabited and the ruins!

26. By God, the hands that grew up in it are covered;
Nor did the tribes buried in its graves know shrouds.

27. Your orders once permeated despite hidden intentions -
Gentle, the way your brother's arrow pierces the throat.

28. You sought the farthest goal and would attain it at once -
While tasks beyond me I failed despite bounty's gifts.

29. How many a clear night I crossed seeking guidance -
And how much time have I lived virtuously through time?

30. Fortune gathering mountains to subtle charm -
Scattering water from milk through delicate discernment.

31. How plainly the truth appears if you had eyes to see! -
How eloquent the sermon if you had ears to hear!

32. Ask the cities about Chosroes and his comrades -
And the head of Ghamdan about Sword of Kindah.

33. How often I stood at a grave, captivated
By the eloquence of those bones and the twisted form!

34. It inspires every silent virtue to speak -
No petitioner stands speechless before it.

35. Whoever acts kindly out of noble empathy
Does as the breeze with the branches and boughs.

36. In his gifts, how much life for dependents ensured -
And plentiful rain like charging rain-clouds!

37. With a host he shakes plains, in war shaking
The cowardly if his decree tremors their craven hearts.

38. There is solace for the Lord of Forbiddance in the calamity of souls -
Indeed, which dear one hasn't been debased?

39. Such is the way of their forebears and ancestors -
People flow according to the patterns set before them.

40. As protector in times of adversity like a mountain,
Stripped bare, and cave for one eroded by time.

41. This, although his fingers' favors guaranteed -
Health and plenty for the protected dependents.

42. But time and fortune altogether follow dissolution -
So they departed despite the goods being paired together.

43. To him the high and low are equal in might -
As beasts are to him as birds in the nest.

44. None of the days of bliss made me happier by his company -
Or made life sweeter in concord and conflict.

45. He possessed the balance of discernment and its judgment -
Openly jovial, privately austere.

46. He attained the subtlest thought through his intuition -
Unreachable by thoughts and intellects however keen.

47. Let separation spill what grief it makes eternal -
And patience expire what sadness it harbors in secret.

48. He quenched the soil where every towering prince halted -
Stirring the ropes of rain and lashing clouds.

49. And in it the traveling beasts of burden kneeled down -
If not even the hobbled camels of Jesus groveled.

50. What a shame if you paid me back for my love
When reckoned on Judgment Day with my goodness!

51. And if others have preceded in loving You,
I merely followed while the rest set precedent.