1. O mourner of the tamarisk trees, grief unites us,
Do we cry for your valley, or for our own valley?

2. What else can you tell us, except that fate
Clipped your wings, wandering in our outskirts.

3. Separation cast us astray, far from our gathering place,
O stranger’s brother and a shade unlike our shade.

4. The days of parting shot us all with arrows,
Piercing you and handing us daggers.

5. When longing calls, our wings broken,
We cannot fly to answer its call.

6. If kinship parts us, o son of the tamarisk,
Hardships bring together the afflicted.

7. You didn’t quench your thirst out of tenderness,
Nor out of thirst, nor out of remembrance,

8. Nor our elegy that vanished.
You drag your leg from ordeal to ordeal,

9. Your trailing tail treading the consolers.
Healers cannot cure your bodily pain,

10. Who then can heal your soul with insight?
Alas! We bid farewell to a comrade from Andalusia,

11. Though we found solace in one of our riders.
We stood true to loyalty’s pledge,

12. Our tears flow, bowed in reverence.
For youths whom the earth cannot soak their tears,

13. Nor their departure, except in prayer.
Had they not been guided by faith, so salient to people,

14. Their morals alone would have sufficed as faith.
We moved from a sanctuary to a sanctuary,

15. Like wine from Babylon that flowed to our abode.
When eternity shone, its prestine image faded,

16. Like flowers, it withered, while we remained.
We water their tombs with praise whenever

17. Our tears compose elegies for them.
Our poems’ rhymes almost awakened them,

18. We nearly roused the sultans in the dust.
But Egypt, though it shed tears in anguish,

19. Still waters our eyes with camphor of immortality.
Around it flapped our amulets,

20. And around its edges stood our porticoes.
Playgrounds where our wishes roamed,

21. And gardens where our hopes resided.
A rising for glories from our demise,

22. And a sunset for ancestry from our origins.
We breathed in Egypt’s sanctity and gardens,

23. A mother like Moses’ mother who took us in,
And by His name saved us from the river,

24. Throwing us in its waters.
Egypt is generous like a vine, ripe fruit

25. For those present, and cups for the nomads.
O lightning bearer, striking our hearts

26. After stillness, and raging in our shelters.
When the sky rained blood in teardrops,

27. Sorrow stirred, and we dyed the earth crying.
The night bears witness, we did not disturb its peace,

28. Nor clamored in our vigils.
The stars never saw us except standing

29. Through the night of passion, guarding our pledge.
Lost like a gasp in the night sky,

30. Repeated in our circle when it brings us low.
By God, if darkness descends upon you,

31. Do not undo the buttons of light in madness.
Every harming hand turns away from you,

32. Be it human or devil sowing corruption.
Until Egypt’s towering sky shelters you

33. Above the clouds, even if they are our clouds.
You are protected by the hyacinth gardens

34. On the banks of glittering turquoise.
The countryside embraced you in all its meadows,

35. Where gazelles grazed and gardens swayed.
So stand by the Nile, and call out in its meadows,

36. And descend as the windswept dew descends.
Relieve what is wasting of our dwellings,

37. Melting away with time and fading pleasures.
You who scent the valley at dawn,

38. Sweetening all our resting places.
Graceful-tailed one, if not for your aggression,

39. We would not be blamed for Joseph’s shirt.
You suffered the thorns until you brought us

40. Roses as books, and lilies as titles.
If we repaid you with precious souls,

41. It still would not equal your fragrant path.
Can your tail carry yearnings and dreams

42. To those whose love we found unlike the rest—
Wordly love, while theirs is love of faith?

43. O you whom we envy with our conscience,
And whose passion we guard in whispers—

44. Yearning for you is lost in our thoughts,
Unable to reveal you in our wishes.

45. We resorted as usual to patience
In trials, but it did not take our hands.

46. We had no power over tears or endurance
Until news of you came from our protector.

47. It seems resurrection’s end is death
In remembering you, and life in forgetting.

48. We folded the darkness in a wound
That nearly folded us in the dark’s lap.

49. When the stars settled, our eyelids did not rest
Until they faded, and our wakefulness calmed.

50. We matched their afflictions with constellations
Until we sat with them, sharing agony.

51. Dawn appears, but our composure hides it
From the gloaters, and our misery makes it dreary.

52. An era like the rain’s folds, plentiful,
Where did we go, while youth’s companions are supple?

53. When time brought us shining companionship
And our times flourished with winds.

54. Unity is pure, life is pleasant,
Fortune adorns, and fate proceeds.

55. The sun promenades, deceptively, in the clouds,
Like Balkis strolling in Yemen’s attire.

56. The Nile welcomes, as when the world celebrates,
Were it loyal to the devoted.

57. If fortune stayed, favor continued,
The torrent subsided, and fate yielded!

58. We would have spilled on earth until it turned to gold—
We would have touched the elixir or clay.

59. The ark accompanied it on its right,
And from Sinai, lights adorned its sides.

60. It possesses the ultimate generosity,
Era of nobility, and pact of the loyalists.

61. Weddings and birthdays belong only
To our days and nights.

62. Fortune never boasted among us
Of taming steeds or raced arenas.

63. We are the gemstones, our essence tested by fire,
Never yielding to the hands of scatterers.

64. We take on no artificial color or nature
Should we vary like the fickle chameleon.

65. The sun never came down to measure
Nor ascended its massive throne like our valley.

66. Did it not deify its edges when it saw
Its red-cheeked children on them?

67. If it flirted with its banks at sunrise, wearing
Green hyacinth gowns with vivid colors.

68. Each tree in the valley’s bend appears
To have woven textiles with sturdy threads.

69. This land, with its plains and mountains
Bowed to Caesars, and we were its shepherds!

70. No builder placed stone over stone
Except over the ruins of our builders.

71. As if Egypt’s pyramids were walls
Erected by the hands of time, not passing builders.

72. Its lofty hallmarks subdue kings
And leave no heirs to its pillars.

73. As if they are sand dunes with a sunken
Ship between them, leaving only its boards.

74. As if under the dawn’s radiance, they are gold,
Covering the treasury and its scales.

75. A land of fatherhood and birth, sweetened
By the wind’s passing through our plaits.

76. Our stances grandly interconnected,
Like rhyming poems flowing mellifluously.

77. Our playful era left through the days’ spheres
And the daydreams of our imagination returned.

78. We left no moment pure, so time called
For us to spoil it, and it said “amen”.

79. If we could, we would have torn the sky with lightning,
And set the land and sea aflame deliriously.

80. Seeking Egypt, fulfilling the right of our memories,
If the loyal forgets, we will weep.

81. A treasure lies with God that we seek,
The best trust from the most faithful trustee.

82. If all the dear ones forget it, our longing
Only comes from our directions.

83. If we carry sorrow for Egypt or it,
We know not which adoration makes us burn.