1. They bid farewell to the sun and leaned on its morning glow
And the East bowed over it, crying

2. I wish I were among the caravan when it set
Joshua's desire stirred and he called it back

3. The dawn clothed its day in blackness
As if the earth had not shed its darkness

4. Look, they meet it with an afterglow
From the wounds of victims and their blood

5. And you see before it a tear
From a martyr whose roses drip their scent

6. The Truth gave tidings to its victims through it
And awakened even the dead with its call

7. They shrouded it a free Alawite
Having clothed death with majesty and honor

8. Except for guidance, Egypt gained nought from its shroud
The flesh of the shroud is truth and its warp

9. The bier passed over the ground bearing it
Eyes peered into the bier scanning its height

10. Ask Safita about her weddings
Did the announcer walk through it and erase it?

11. It disturbed the holidaymaker from his chatter
And vanished from the riverbank and its sediment

12. At night it opened the doors of its monastery
And the bells established their allegiance to it

13. Lightning split the gloom unfolding it
The land of Syria and folding its sky

14. Bearing the news creeping sadly
Like bereavement processions in the heat of their wake

15. Doubt assaulted her and she wavered
Whispering into ears and lips

16. I said: O people gather your dreams
Each soul in its veins denies them

17. O enemy of captivity, no specter smiled at him
In a blueprint unless he consented to it

18. Your tether will not chafe from the captivity
That wandered the slave-market and covenanted with it

19. The messengers descended upon him and the feet
Of the noble stumbled over it and pardoned it

20. O remains like the basil of dawn
Which Eden crowned the zeal of its creatures

21. And remnants of a temple of generosity
And life that the land cultivated its vitality

22. Justice bid farewell to its emblems through it
And the systems of consultation wept their counsel

23. It embraced your funeral bier and huddled around it
A flag you ransomed from indignity

24. It embraced the breast that embraced it
And warded off the arrow from it and protected it

25. My wonder at it and its leader
How does an unarmed elder protect its sanctuary

26. The pulpit of the river collapsed
From bereaving it, its dowels withered from its habitation

27. Who shot the horseman off his steed
And stunned rhetoric into silence

28. Fate writhed in cities twisting them
And stunned mountains with what stunned them

29. It seized Bostra and ruined a clan
That touched the death rattle with its hand

30. The chalice circulated among the tribes
From the wine of patriotism it imbibed

31. It distracted its minarets from a captivating lute
A mellifluous and sublimely adroit chord

32. The spirit of its nation swooned over it
And an ear that loved it with both ears

33. Every day a spiritual sermon
Like psalms and the melodies of its diction

34. It deluded Egypt even if in it
Were horsemen that deluded the desolate ranges

35. Guardian of the Fount of Truth and defender of its basin
Destiny unleashed its edicts against it

36. It took Saad from the house a hand
That seizes lions from the origin of their burrows

37. Had it struck other than one with a soul it would not
Have been safe from it, neither peak nor dale

38. It defies medicine with its glove
The malady of fate that frustrated its cure

39. From behind the ear it obtained an affliction
That his peers attained only through prestige

40. It did not square with the frankest of souls
Neither hand, nor tongue, nor repose, nor vigilance

41. These planks from Adam neither revealed their pace
Nor recognized their gait or track

42. It conveyed an anxiety and leaned towards doom
That in life failed to evade its steps

43. It mixes the two lifetimes, white hair and youth
And the two lives, misery and comfort

44. A boat floating forever in tears
That recognized no shore but the one after it

45. The bereft slip along its traces
And when it hid from them one day, their lips cracked

46. A nation sheds over Saad blood
From the rock of truth it built its edifice

47. It is sheer obstinacy in its fount
And sheer refusal in the clamor of its limpidity

48. Its elders taught it the truth and faith
Imbibed the truth through it like sucklings

49. It spent money, safety, and blood
And on its leader cast its hope

50. It burdened it with a pact it fulfilled
And tested it with rights that it dispensed

51. The son of seventy endured captivity for it
And the misery of prison and woe of exile

52. A journey from Eden on earth to
An abode nearer than its axis

53. A vanquisher who flung it into a boulder
That repelled the eagles to it and gave it refuge

54. A jewel in sea and land deprecated its crown
Ask it and ask those who envy it

55. Why did nothing but it flow from the pearl
It engendered revolution a free woman

56. Through the honored, free lifetimes it nurtured
None wished for offspring but it

57. And who begets the radiant spurns all but it
From its cubs the forest flowed

58. Between its eyes, writhing with fervor
God bless its branch

59. And ordain the good for Egypt in its yield
Did it not write its constitution for it

60. With free blood and elevate its tribune
We wrote it so it became an image

61. Its core truth and its end truth
The rebel slept except for revolution

62. In the path of truth whose embers will not fade
As a child it adopted it warming

63. Its palms, and as a youth it nurtured it
It toured it with a rousing pen

64. And tongue whenever its enclosures wearied
And cast itself into its volcano

65. Thus becoming the first of men to face its flames
Have you known after Moses one with a hand

66. That flung a staff into Pharaoh's face
And a grieving, screaming woman

67. Whose visage the yoke, O people, adorned and crowned
It obtained victory over the arrogant from an arrogant one

68. Victorious over the days, divinely supported
The deaf Nile mutters around it

69. And India's blades did not speak nonsense
Where is the free soul from my eyes

70. I used to see with my eyes yesterday?
Whenever I came it roused itself

71. And confided the good tidings of me to it and summoned it
And time flowed so what did it remember

72. And the soul's recollection is part of its troth
I glimpse the days in it and I see

73. Behind old-age the statue of its youth
I do not know when its freshness darkened,

74. Did age climb above it or did it climb over age?
Seventy alighted in its temple

75. So it wavered while plentiful in its column
The fright of the club if it jests

76. Its jest will not take away its splendor
Excuse will prevail against its utmost anger

77. And affection attain the ends of its approval
It has patience for its enviers

78. Resembling pardoning and a clemency from attacking it
I do not forget a laughing page

79. That seizes the soul and courses to its passion
And a discourse like the tales of infatuation

80. That kindled in the youth a yearning and narrated it
And a rugged canal that if granted

81. To the unarmed fish it would be bewildered and lost in it
Where am I from a pen if

82. I appoint it to eulogize the sun and elegy it
It betrayed me on Saad's day and overflowed

83. In the eulogies and fell short of its scope
In God's bliss a soul that was granted

84. The delights of life yet did not forget its piety
Neither revealing knowledge when its pride approached

85. With destiny nor the science that adorned it
It passed away devout

86. Free from the perplexity of doubt guiding it
It perceived a frail humanity and saw

87. Behind the ephemeral world its God
It only hastened when the Truth called it

88. Would that it were the day of anguish that called it