1. The discourses of calamities, how majestic they are!
And the peace of death is like deception in war.

2. You want the days to cease their vicissitudes,
Can the nature of snakes change from biting?

3. You encounter death while in the prime of life.
How long does a bird live inside the snare?

4. All people delude themselves about what befalls them
While they make peace treaties against the calamities of fate.

5. With the cup of our father Adam we drank
That which contained the intoxication of death—what a drink!

6. When a newborn inherits the illness of its father
Blame it not, for disease and medicine are helpless.

7. Death swoops down on the souls' meadows to change them.
Tell me, how can they remain secure from its talons?

8. Old age makes a withering ruin of sprightly youth
Femininity seems incongruous in aged masculinity.

9. When the onslaught of senility melts his body
It flows like a torrent and freezes upon the ankle.

10. And a deadly arrow strikes him, unavoidable,
Having no shield in the battle, hiding in the robes.

11. No numb and drugged man is safe from death.
Its wrath appears through grinding teeth.

12. As if daggers with sharpened heads
Were embedded in its mouth on both sides.

13. How can we ward death off from our brains
When the strong overwhelm the weak?

14. A swooping blade, wide and long,
Circling down from the sky onto the grave.

15. When dawn glimmers, it brandishes its glitter
And phantoms of planets and stars flutter in the shadows.

16. It chases the birds as soon as they leave their nests,
You see them only fluttering helplessly.

17. If one seeks refuge atop a towering peak,
The girls of fate reach it by arduous climbing.

18. Even so, it swoops down from the height of its flight
Onto every steadfast mountain at daybreak.

19. God's command will demolish its lofty peaks
As souls demolish decaying bodies pell-mell.

20. Each has a life, then death, then resurrection
When the adversaries stand before my Lord.

21. The celestial spheres will halt in their motions,
And the planets will detach from their axial poles.

22. Did not the scream of a mourning woman reach
The East, her weeping overflowing in the West?

23. God watered an insurgent grave with pure rain
Clouds He pleased to pour down generously.

24. For it was exalted by my noble aunt's presence
I weep over it with wailing until I can wail no more.

25. With tears that extend toward her grave in a torrent
When grief and pouring become one.

26. Had I been sure not to drown I would have poured it out,
But my moist heart is tender toward my moist heart.

27. Despite me the caravans' tongues eulogize her for highness—
How can I prevent the tongues of travelers from eulogy?

28. A grave strange to her land's graves though adjacent,
Neighborly in scheming wounds and strikes.

29. Noble in her devotional prayers and fasting—
Her body withered from it down to the shinbone.

30. She blossomed in deeds of magnanimity, her branches
Rose to the excellence her noble ancestors attained.

31. When we lost that brilliant moon of her people
We held rites of mourning for her alongside meteors.

32. We praised Muhammad's daughter's lamentations—
Who could keen the keen but the keener's daughter?

33. She passed leaving a legacy of piety and faith
Interpreted for non-Arabs by the tongues of Arabs.

34. Can my heart be calm, not melting with sorrow?
While the heart of dust is harsh to her tender heart!

35. When my breast was troubled by events
I sought comfort in her spacious breast.

36. She dispelled the sorrow of my soul as if
She had quenched a thirsty man's thirst with cool sweet water,

37. Calling my name compassionately, inclining affectionately,
Rending my hearing with the sincerity of her passion.

38. Your father whose roots made glory grow tall
And the pillar of the noble house was established firmly—

39. He secluded himself in goodness, performing pilgrimage
Eighty times—O the length of a life fleeing to the Lord!

40. I gathered his body into my breast with both hands
And propped up his delicate side against my side.

41. The hands were blessed in smoothing the soil
Over a mountain solidly rooted on a plateau.

42. The rain of their tears envied them,
Or did the misery of exile grow from their hands?

43. Oh, would that I had witnessed your bier's procession
Surrounded not by my family or companions,

44. And your burial by strange hands when death met you
To hide you from sight in a concealed grave!

45. I could press my cheek upon your niche out of mercy
While my eyes sprinkled dust upon it slowly.

46. I see your body deprived of spirit, serene,
While the earth's hollow bustles with it.

47. If my spirit was a possession I could grant
I would grant it to your body, but my soul is not mine to grant.

48. If accounts of glory were strung into necklaces one day
The essence of lineage would be threaded on them as pearls.

49. Father of al-Hasan, days fell the wealthy
Then follow with tribulation and deceive with love.

50. The calamity you faced, I found my own in it
Your grief part of my grief, your adversity my adversity.

51. So patience—reward is only for those who endure
Afflictions of fate, for fate is never without distress.

52. Do you not see that we are in a caravan
Continually marching off and returning like sinners?

53. No lasting union but of names traveling from us
In volumes inscribed and titles of books.

54. Always my tears' rain irrigates my cheek
And the cheek's soil is constantly drinking.