1. How strange this house is, how it turns!
Poetry has stumbled in it and emotion

2. Poetry has left it full of regrets
Bared and full of desolation and aloofness

3. Poetry has lost from the East a sun
That has never ceased to shine its light on the East

4. Poetry has lost from the East a meadow
Where birds have long sung over it

5. Poetry has lost the father of poetry (Shawqi)
So calamity and misfortune prevail in it

6. So my worries overflow from it
And my tears from it become seas

7. What calamities the moment of death contains!
When the skin is weak and the patient goes mad

8. O you who cry in the mourning of (Shawqi)
Have you seen how a star disappears?

9. Have you seen how dawn turns away?
Have you seen how the earth crumbles?

10. Rise, and bring pride to poetry through it
For poetry’s hands are full of abundance from it

11. Stop, we bid farewell to one who did not bid farewell
His excuse is that staying is deceitful

12. Do not leave me in the shadow of life
We are dead and the palaces are graves

13. We have surrounded life with an ocean
And on the bridge of death is the crossing

14. O prince of poetry, sorry, for blindness has sat on us
And sadness has crept into the palaces

15. If beyond the sea there are homes, come to us
Grief has crept into them, so they are monsters

16. The corners echoed the sound of moaning
And they wore black curtains

17. So their people have long devotion
And absent souls and presence

18. And hearts that have flipped, and palms
And cheeks that have been slapped, and throats

19. O prince of poetry, enough mention
You are sanctified in life as purity

20. The abyss has taught us in darkness
How eagles rise high in the sky

21. Do not be bothered by erosion, for you a tomb
That has buried in it wisdom and piety

22. O prince of poetry, where are melodies?
They have nothing but your singing maidens

23. Where is the paved, ingenious rhyme?
With it meaning rose, so it is a wall

24. And tales that crept like lightning
Bringing wonder to generations and eras

25. You breathed life into rhymes
Making them a gift and awakening

26. Proper Arabic came so it fluttered and marched
As birds come early at dawn

27. And lit up around it, so it is fire
And people are Moses and you are the Mount

28. Your poetry marched in life an army
So it has a crawl in it and pride

29. Pure in taste, so it is the essence
With no rinds on it like essences

30. And it rose high, a tall cypress in poetry
With soft branches and roots

31. And the horizons were wide in every direction
A vision unrestrained by barriers

32. So the signs of East and West in it were seen
And met in rough plains

33. O my heart, do not be disturbed by misfortunes
Creation made of grief and joy

34. Lovers are known through it for yearning
So they have love and hatred in it

35. I do not see bodies but as ships
Sinking, and graves are breaches

36. And I see souls in them like a caravan
Some female, some male

37. Some companions with tails, with tails
And some companions in chests, in chests