1. The mujahid attained the rank of martyr,
And cast off his staff, dispossessed and exiled.

2. His enemy, inertness, became inanimate,
While he who had freed the fettered spent the night fettered.

3. Exile urged him on to an abode
Where the blithe spirit meets the woeful corpse.

4. So he came closer to a trustworthy appointment-
The meeting that confirms certainty and humbles denial.

5. Thus the disciple spent the night between two martyred companions-
Martyrs to whom a martyr flowed gently between arms and shoulders.

6. So blessed be your grave that hoarded treasures,
Observed rights, and kept covenants!

7. Indeed, they sheathed in you the sharpest sword;
O grave, have you a scabbard more faithful than they?

8. Three creeds in one hollow
That pound mountains and raze iron to dust;

9. They sat and became a sturdy foundation
Upon which the splendid structure was erected.

10. Do not forget the favors of yesterday-
Lo! Yesterday is the foundation of existence.

11. Were it not for decay in the corners of tombs
No antiquity would manifest itself to be renewed.

12. Whoever seeks the qualities from their treasure,
Let them know that creed is an ancient treasure,

13. Learned through steadfastness or constancy-
The coolness of men, and the passion of the ardent.

14. Hounded by politics from youth,
The hounded one deserves to take his rest.

15. You encountered its wiles,
And nothing contrives cunning like politics.

16. You took on what no soul can endure
And exceeded the utmost effort.

17. You were tossed into the fire like pure gold
And exiled like the unique pearl.

18. Do you remember when you were under the banner
Of the prophet, eminent in status, restraining the multitudes?

19. When you looked upon the two banks,
Perhaps the countryside beckoned to you and the floodplains stirred;

20. The wind shook your shoulders
And the earth slid from the jostling throng.

21. Missives pouring with elegant prose
And making one forget the epistles of Abdel Hamid.

22. The elders of sanctuaries know them like hadith
While the youth memorize them like chanting.

23. Why then did events deny them?
The passage of time and the passing of generations?

24. The people forgot the recent past;
Will its narratives have someone to repeat them?

25. They say: What business has Abou Nasser
With the Turks or the Indians?

26. Why take on the concerns of kin
And the concerns of distant people?

27. So I said: How does it harm you
If the Muslims have a rightly-guided leader?

28. Do you think it too much they have one
When the ancients left heirs to the iron?

29. He strove to reconcile hearts
And did not return to the guidance of the Revered Book.

30. He tightened the bonds of religion in his land
And called the unbelievers to God.

31. And the people, even beyond the wastelands,
Have preachers who sing and missionaries who guide.

32. May God reward a beneficent king
Merciful of heart and kind of vein,

33. As if eloquence in his days
Was like the sciences in the shade of the Rightly Guided,

34. Healing the wounds of the generous
And seeking them out in the corners of exile.

35. He sheltered your family from their time
And showed them favor in terrible tribulation.

36. The orphaned girl under his care
And he wiped away the tears of the orphan boy.

37. Greetings Abou Nasser in the dust
That makes the dust envy the meadows.

38. You went far and the mail between us grew distant;
Can there be mail between the living and the dead?

39. Yes, between us are the messengers of memories
And the past that haunts and the tears that flow,

40. And thoughts-if life has tamed them-
Still loiter in the valley of annihilation.

41. Yes, between us is the perpetual saddle-wood
Though its rider does not return.

42. Time has passed as it followed after tears,
Established in governing the deserts.

43. How often it has borne downpours that pour
And how often it has nurtured creeping insects!

44. I conjure you by death-will you tell me:
Are you wretched in it or happy?

45. And how can the stranger be called a man
A guest of forebears, lodging at ancestral homes?

46. How can it be said of the neighbor of ghosts
The neighbor of endings, the one and only?