1. Realize with your dawn a distressed world
I implored your dawn not to be a lie

2. O ladder overlooking the world
Blessed is your era, if realized, blessed

3. Why does your face after its long veil
Tell of the wan faces of lovers?

4. May God have mercy, the night grew long and the Pleiades linked
Until souls fell, utterly lost

5. No life remained in the blood's course
The veins complained of depleted blood

6. Its molars ground both its victors and vanquished
Showing mercy to none, defeating none

7. When the chanters sang victory's song
The tune of joy seemed strange on their lips

8. They brought the day of victory fermenting
A flood of blood and tears of joy

9. They filled their cups but whenever they attempted to drink
They were reminded by its redness of spilled blood

10. I searched among the revelers but found
Only a piercing lament in the heart

11. How many sweethearts in the revelers’ throng
Spend the night conversing with a sweetheart in the soil?

12. How many bereft mothers do not know where to find their sons
So they reproach him with their overflowing tears?

13. The sailor’s complexion was marred from him
Yet to the sailor he was a beloved

14. Whom battle divorced from his hands in the fray—
How can he clap for peace blissfully?

15. Ask the fires, what have your flames cooked?
Livers, hearts or captives?

16. Ask the flood, how many souls has it sheltered
And how much precious treasure has it concealed greedily?

17. A ghoul who snatches the babe from its mother’s hand
With its flames and the terrified, screaming infant

18. It came when misfortunes blew
Leaving the tallest towers sad

19. No shrouded dead wears out his youth
In its arenas, grayed before his prime

20. Where can we celebrate the weddings of victory day?
The cities became ruins and flames

21. Alas! The countries will not forget their bereavement
Or regain their stolen beauty

22. Civilization strides while it is a fatal illness
And walks in the gait of one lame yet deems itself a doctor

23. And when they scar over, the wounds it leaves
In the body of the wind are but gashes

24. Nations who built the pillar of civilization high—
Why did they not make it an object of ruin?

25. The competent trustees of the world
Left the world drenched in their blood

26. The mighty imposed their rule on the weak—
Who then can stand watch over the watcher?

27. Who can lead the commoners and their chiefs
When all have lost the way, their paths and roads?

28. Leave the reins of nations to a people
Contented with sparse means for their living

29. Sustenance titles life—why then
Has it caused kingdoms and peoples to perish?

30. States alternate in ascendance and decline
Like the orbit of stars, rising and setting

31.
O Lord of an arrogant conqueror

32. Who has become, by his armies, crucified
Women have walked over his remains and perhaps

33. Among men, his name was once revered
His virtues had filled eyes with glory

34. Until when he fell, they noted only faults
O Lord of a roar, which after the lion’s cry

35. Has been filled by crows with lamentation
One who delayed his earthly rule—

36. Has he shed a tear or voiced a lament?
He found no grave in the land he opened

37. With a welcome, so long as he lived
Can we attribute ferocious, attacking valor

38. To a cave, which wild beasts shun in fear?
Swooping down from on high like a destructive eagle

39. And creeping like harmless vipers
Do not consider shedding blood a virtue

40. For conquerors; rather account it a sin
Glory belongs not to destructive attackers

41. Even if they have sharpened claws and fangs
While the cave disowns the heads made to dwell in it

42. They taught people killing and torture
The courageous cave-dweller is but a reformer

43. Who has filled the world with goodness
Through his existence, he brought this world more existence

44. And uncovered tribulations for his children
The ungenerous world rewarded him with a learned one

45. Or a gifted poet
I swear the armies were not led by a commander

46. Who summoned efforts and battled distress
Weapons dropped from the pulpits and the voice arose

47. Of consciences and minds, the orators
The peacemakers called for peace and found

48. Every listening heart responding
Say to the confident victors: Prepare

49. For peace many posts and wars
By God, the wars have not earned any tribe

50. To whom peace is not a gain
Nations that see the day of salvation near

51. Have been reassured by your promises
We want from peace only its purity

52. Not its words or scripted pact
Forgive us if suspicion haunts a people

53. Who have known politics as deceit and cunning
It was named for nations who flap broken wings

54. Beaten down against their necks
Its ferocious texts have not extinguished wars

55. Rather, increased wars’ ferocity
If you draft a covenant for peace

56. Mix the tears of bereaved mothers into its ink
Or embellish its script with blood of victims

57. And recall a day spent wretchedly
Cast it as justice encompassing the land

58. Not as pasture for the mighty, fertile
And take the Merciful as your witness

59. And suffice by your Lord as witness and reckoner
Entrust it to mosques and churches

60. Place crescent and cross over it
God created the peoples equal

61. With no Lord among them and nothing divine
No precarious peace will set right for you

62. A people whose rights you have plundered
No ship will reach safe harbor

63. If the builders’ hands have left holes in its hull
Such is the past, take heed of its lessons