1. Is what I hope for nearer than what I await?
I long for a time, yet time slides away.

2. The dearest of lost things is returning youth,
After turning its back and parting.

3. How good is the world when united,
Yet it is the mother who abandons her sons.

4. The nights have passed and estranged us,
Mother of nights and estrangement.

5. It is as if each day chases the next,
And each era consumes the next.

6. Do my alternating youth and maturity sadden me,
One leaves me, the other accompanies me?

7. Each day I gain more experience,
How learned is one who still asks!

8. The Pleiades do not travel west, shining,
But it is the sunset of departing youth.

9. Wine is only what date palms and grapes release,
While wine from Babylon and serpents is fatal.

10. I passed the dwellings in anguish,
With my companion who is not here asking about them.

11. The two encampments confronted each other,
One in the hardy striking of swords, the other tranquil.

12. One erased the landmarks with shedding blood,
The other with a downpour and floods.

13. O house, you resembled the necklaces though
The beads scattered and the strings broke.

14. The winds shed your wings' pearls
As ornaments for the hills with aloes' fragrance.

15. You came to have a torn pocket,
With panting breath and ever-flowing tears.

16. If only you could be as you were, with gazelles
Grazing freely, and camels bleating playfully.

17. For that valley was a canal, and tongues recited poetry,
And dwellings were gathering places and assemblies,

18. With frowning, lamp-bearing, horse-riding women,
And singing, laughing, flirting beloveds,

19. As the bonfires spent the night kindled for a tribe,
With the son of Hayjaa chanting poetry.

20. Morning cups and evening wine were passed around,
With singing, declaiming, and passion.

21. Away with nights of sleeplessness for us, yet not
Nights of heavy cloudbursts for the few!

22. Our life was like the days of Ja'far,
When justice smiled and complainers were few.

23. We call it a sword, yet death is its edge,
The implements of war, and the army its sheath.

24. If not for the remainder of his justice,
There would be no fair judgment in the world.

25. If God were to give hearts his affection,
Or his gentleness, it would bring the slain killer to life.

26. If every leader of a people were like him,
No era of change would topple regimes.

27. If anyone knows Ja'far as I know him,
No living, speaking soul in the world is ignorant of him.

28. His day is spent piercing the vile, reconciling,
Judging wisely, resolving assemblies.

29. A hero, when he wished, adorned his lance
With blood, while lances around him were idle.

30. He gave abundantly, belittling his gifts,
So dawns blushed and clouds bore them.

31. The name of the clouds is his, and he is like Kanahoor,
While the names of seas are his rivulets.

32. If not for the vastness of the horizons’ directions,
The delights and virtues would not have room for him.

33. If this silent one does not awake
From what I see, this patient one will perish.

34. A request will be lost and a seeker fail,
Hopes diminish and dreamers vanish.

35. His nature is generosity, and rainclouds rarely
Blow evil winds and are barren.

36. They came willingly while winds were still,
And cleared while clouds were abstaining.

37. Ambitions carry him, so eyes ambitious
For the highest goals diminish the necks of competitors.

38. He looked at enemies with a first glance,
At which their power and joints weakened.

39. And looked at the world with another equal glance,
At which it was apportioned among people as an extra.

40. No land was devoid of his influence, no tongue
Failed to thank what he bestowed, speaking of him.

41. He mounted his steed, but did not take a step
Unless the shoulders of countries knelt before him.

42. He saw the barefoot, but did not allow them a moment
Unless the trains of riding camels and their tails submitted.

43. After hardship, resolves come to him
For which fires are kindled after the dawn.

44. It is as if they are clouds on souls
And snares upon hearts.

45. Decisive women, with no hesitation ahead
Or thought of retreat, like swooping eagles.

46. The attainments are his enemies, even if
He is the moon, with the stars as strongholds.

47. When the hawk of the air shook its feathers,
Thunderbolts fell dumb before it.

48. A king, when his armor was polished,
It had a day of heating by flame.

49. When blood flowed on its sides,
It had from that blood a cleansing torrent.

50. The hearts of mankind were filled with awe of him,
And supernatural jinn obeyed his compelling cry.

51. So when you hear his roar in the distance,
Know the formidable lion has arrived.

52. If other than a living, speaking being claimed him,
The beasts of the wild would dispute it.

53. Qais and others are forgotten for his horsemen,
While Kulayb and others are not wronged.

54. Attacks of resolve have no equal,
And directions of resolve have no opponents.

55. Take on the burdens of the caliphate entirely,
For the one who carries them has a strong back.

56. Censuring tongues may be your resting place,
Though their zeal is mere confusion and raving.

57. You marched despite a throng of mourners
And a cloudburst, darkness, and slippery ground.

58. Torrents flowed with no shelter,
And seas raged with no coast.

59. You marched on, and the clouds followed with their rain,
As if, wherever you were, contending with you.

60. Proceeding, it was as if the rain spout of your coat of mail
Were hands extended, and your hands filled with bounty.

61. Behind your sword, deadly sharp,
And before it, an army whose positions are for God’s army.

62. With horses neighing, riders handling lances,
The Ansaris competing and reconciling.

63. It was as if the plateaus wereeting you with blond spear shafts
And the young camels with slender spear shafts.

64. As if you came from the heavens,
And were returning to the heavens.

65. The celestial spheres above you
Were like crescents subservient to you.

66. The White Fort with you has sharp swords,
And the line of Ghassan has flashing blades.

67. The lions, all lions with you, are horsemen,
And all the land with you has judges.

68. Tongues extinguish for you the planets’ flames,
And meteors change the horizons.

69. Like lightning in its burst of clouds,
With thunderbolts and joining flashes.

70. One blood like enduring rain, but this
Is wholly piercing, while that is a downpour.

71. With it are the white-bladed swords that make
Some gush blood and others despair.

72. Birds that have no vanguards
Or rear guards, polestars or celestial bodies.

73. As if supplied for them were shelters,
And roaring camels bellowed for them.

74. Keen, knowing only raiding,
Swooping down on the puppets.

75. Chasing from fore and aft,
Like swooping eagles and arrows.

76. Stamping in the arena of destruction,
The zebras, plunging and rising steeply.

77. It was as if the plateaus were their running steeds,
And the young camels their yearlings kept close.

78. As if they came forth from a heaven,
And were returning to a heaven.

79. The celestial orbits above them
Were like their crescents.

80. The whiteness, the darkness,
The brilliant and obscuring gloom.

81. Glory meets glory in their open spaces,
With processions coming and going.

82. Until you arrived and settled among the tents,
Their peaks became as their bottoms.

83. O Lord of the valley you once left
With its crickets singing mournfully!

84. You took it suddenly and burst open its hills,
So springs flowed beneath them.

85. You trod between its groves and dens,
Destroying its encampments and alarming the timid.

86. You left it to die in its yards,
Truth, while hopes’ delusions are false.

87. Carrion-eaters wavered over it and wandered,
While moaning doves and owls cried in lament.

88. Neither did fire kindle its chambers,
But your horses raced through, plunging in attack.

89. You saw no opinion as right
Except your view in perplexities, every other erring.

90. If the unseen could be known
To mortals, the wise and rational would know it.

91. The resolute hero struggles with himself,
So you see him, though he is compromising.

92. The secrets he intends and strives for
Nearly escape even his conscience.

93. Go forth, and you will never lack white swords
To advance with, or dark swords to strike with.

94. The nights will not be stripped of you, but rather
Adorned with you, while those passing are barren.

95. Without you, what are the Arabs
But flocks taken together, and a ruined house?

96. Without your hands, what is kingdom
But a flimsy bond, and the pillar of a leaning tent?

97. So let them leave your lofty path,
For you have a way between planets.

98. The barefoot were compelled, and passed
Harshly over the ground, while you flew over high deserts.

99. All the generous of the waste are only speakers
Of generosity, while you alone are its doer.

100. If your justice did not abandon lovers,
No passion in lovers or nightingales would remain unsated.

101. You witnessed war in your youth, when none
Other than yourself fought for yourself zealously.

102. And the realm was then a swaying banner,
Borne by the winds, with none but you to carry it.

103. You followed your father’s course, that prominent one,
And inherited your father’s sword, that resolver.

104. Days when no tribes were drawn to you,
Nor cares burdened you.

105. You reddened it when scarcely a hand or fingers
Could wield it, so ambitions stretched to encompass it.

106. One who guaranteed a portion of his people
Was generous, but you guarantee every portion.

107. When resolved, every valley has heaps of dead,
And when angry, every mountain pass is blocked.

108. When distant, everything is imperfect,
And when near, everything complete.

109. God created the barren earth,
While the places you tread on it become settled.

110. He created mankind, and among them Ja'far stood out
With his family, and every living thing is indebted to him.

111. If you were not virtuous, your numbers would not decrease,
Just as the solitary stars are few.