1. I came in the morning, O Fate, with adversity,
Having abandoned the mind of guidance while still untrained,

2. I only aimed your arrows at a soul,
Seeking with them its religion and innermost being.

3. You did not hit anyone, yet
You felled the most virtuous of people with one shot,

4. He did not swerve from the pillar of law,
He remained lofty and eminent among mankind.

5. All of Egypt held a funeral for the respected one, honored among people,
Sorrow divided hearts so each one

6. Received an arrowshare to slay endurance weeping,
And his ink was interred in a grave -

7. He who saw his grave before it, plunged into a sea.
He died but his memory lives immortal,

8. Glory belongs to those who live by remembrance.
The people are forbidden pleasures,

9. Their tears flow freely from their eyes,
Will endurance abandon them when it sees them

10. Stumbling blindly in the embers of grief?
Or did the lightning flash announcing, so the clouds of tears poured down,

11. Weeping over him, describing the essence of his virtue -
He was a treasure and reserve for the hopeful,

12. Encompassing horizons with his absence the esteemed one -
threads between vibration and quavering,

13. Describing in his attributes fear and alarm.
How many souls amidst the darkness of sorrow are now

14. Captive at the lightning’s hour captive!
It severed hearts - if only it had

15. Severed the wire, for that is more fitting.
Does it know that no pillar remains upright?

16. It has announced the death of the eminent pillar.
We never knew a dove scatter ashes or

17. Ravage the middle of the nest in disorder.
His absence has overwhelmed horizons,

18. Reaching them, bringing existence and glad tidings.
O jurist whose laws of virtue

19. Still resonate their echoes through time!
Your words were a necklace of pearls

20. Strung by narrators on a wire.
So pearls flowed in hearing when

21. The absence of virtue burned hearts.
Like a flood of agates flowing, flinging

22. Pearls of wisdom from mines polished and pure,
Rushing over parchment it chose the word’s elegance,

23. And hurried meaning to hearing innocent.
When it described with ink it drew the honey

24. And polished goblet to use as its ink.
The discourse of eloquence was true to him,

25. Above songbirds scattering magic.
Had the ink not been wine

26. Our minds would not have found intoxication.
The greatest philosopher was refuted by your

27. Interpretation of the Qur’an’s greatest sign,
If he was Nature's servant before

28. You made him free again through Sacred Law.
Your proofs split the night of polytheism’s darkness

29. With the light of guidance burning bright,
You were the best helper of religion when

30. Religion called out to you “victory!”
Some said Shibli left but I said, “He met

31. Another lion,” giving glad tidings.