1. Time weeps when it laughs,
So why do you laugh at one who weeps?

2. Do you gloat at a man's lament today?
Perhaps tomorrow you will lament what he laments.

3. I saw my enemies perish, and was glad,
Saying: thus do I wish the doomed to perish!

4. Yet life held no joy for me without my foes,
For death will overtake whomever it misses.

5. When death is recalled, let one be moved to piety,
And hold back from all but righteousness.

6. The honorable man makes night his day,
His halt his lodging, and his book his ark.

7. Worse than death is a life of degradation,
Better than autonomy, a pious servant.

8. Who kept faith and who betrayed are revealed,
One you call foe, the other friend.

9. How masters flourished, then grew insolent
When none reigned over them but upstarts!

10. Piety and probity have led the world,
Unlocking fettered necks thereby.

11. Soon he who mounted by impiety
Will fall, or nearly fall.

12. He whose aim was not his ancestor's rectitude
Will stray into the wastes his sins created.

13. Take custom, leave innovation;
Observe to take or leave.

14. Exert yourself in quest of knowledge,
To gain glory and a noble line.

15. Wealth lies only in the scholar's wisdom,
Poverty only in the fool's conceit.

16. God is He, so know this certainty
And leave uncertainty to the deviants.

17. Ask them: does any but God
Give life or death, move or keep still?

18. Can God be doubted? High exalted is His Name!
Wretched the man of insight who doubts!

19. Recalling, man finds his Lord
With enlightened heart and mind.

20. Of no use is a man's faith
If his heart associates others with God.

21. Glory to Him who veils the detractors,
Though if He wished, He could expose them.

22. When an envious man or I seize aught,
Good or ill, it is the holding that hurts.

23. I am the pure gold, how long will burning
In the hellfire of cares refine me?

24. How long will contention wound me,
My children and I ever at war?

25. Would that on the day one who bears grudges
Against me has to repay them,

26. He could dissolve some of my agonies,
Not multiply them!

27. I was a full moon, now am waning
As the nights of tribulation advance.

28. As if between us had never been his face
To illuminate the dark when it descends.

29. As if his words were never a sharp sword
To repel the blades of the enemy horde.

30. He brought his parents joy in joyousness,
So he was Ibn Badr's moon among stars.

31. I used to say: he will help me
Possess my days, if days can be possessed.

32. But when he reached his prime, flourishing,
I was veiled from him by fate's curtain.

33. He fell ill, and loss restored him;
He bequeathed me wounds that pierce.

34. He left me among the piercing thorns,
Else, were it not for piety, I would be them.

35. I seek refuge only in my enemies,
I find rest only in weeping.

36. If misfortunes have wasted me,
I have defied them since my beard first sprouted.

37. What vengeance, if I meet my enemies
While he meets God and the angels!

38. The houris will kiss his eyelids
While his blood was spilled profusely.

39. Who will convey to him from his father
The greeting of either sorrow or solace?

40. Since he left, I have abandoned glory
And my path has been blocked, my route erased.

41. I worship the Rich: intercede for me tomorrow
To reunite us, God willing, in the Abode of Peace

42. On the Viridarium beneath which rivers flow,
That gives us maidens with large, dark eyes.

43. Your father who threaded phrases' pearls,
Had you lived, you would have outdone him.

44. Around him poets split hairs,
But none threaded as he threaded.

45. Peace upon you from one who laments, suffering
Separation from you - if lament could avail the lamenter!