1. When will you attend, O justice, in splendor
And never be absent from us, no, never!

2. How often you promised us, O justice, a union
Yet we yearned for it but attained no union

3. We asked you to sail forth when
You lingered but added only more lingering

4. Turn to people one day, O justice
For people place their trust in you

5. Your absence, which none would enjoy,
Would mean the loss of a kingdom’s glory

6. And happiness appears wherever you shine
And safety leans wherever you incline

7. You are like the dawn when it shines
And illuminates pillars arrayed on the hills

8. You have lit the way for people before
While you were then but a crescent moon

9. How then, as the full moon of this age
Having attained the peak of light and perfection

10. Do you conceal your beloved light from us
And veil your beauty from those who love you?

11. Set up a great office for truth
And allow us to join it in haste

12. That we may read in our darkness a book
And complain before you of our state

13. I stopped, my eyes brimming with tears
Upon a meadow that drought had stricken

14. Upon a meadow that drought
Had diminished but left no trace

15. I asked it but it gave no answer
As if the meadow did not grasp the question

16. I stood facing a phantom that seemed
To tell me of the meadow's wasting away

17. As if, when I asked it, it was a specter
Addressing an idle specter

18. It reminded me of days when the meadow
Would play with me and grant me union

19. A union I enjoyed as if I drank
With thirst a fresh and limpid draught

20. But O meadow, your love in my heart
Is like a blazing and flaring fire

21. Show me how your night passes
For after you, our night is prolonged

22. Umayyah denied us your nearness
Then would not allow attainment

23. And we knew not, when you denied union
If that was stinginess or coquetry

24. I have sinned, O may God watch over you
That I loved, O meadow, your beauty

25. Turn in the meadow an eye toward me
And behold the state the meadow is in

26. It has shunned, away from you, a sweet living
So the eye flows in profuse weeping

27. This meadow I told you about
Is none but the homeland we held dear

28. And it is none but justice we yearned for
And a meadow we used as a symbol

29. When a man's life becomes futile
He cannot bear to live it

30. And an incurable illness clings to him
And his illness becomes hard to bear

31. His enemies rejoice smugly
And his loved ones leave in boredom

32. He has no doctor but the doves
Who heal the pains that befell him

33. For death pities him and saves him
From sorrows that weighed heavy on him

34. And death is a noble refuge
For him who pitched his tents in its field

35. Visit us soon, O death, visit us
For in your visit we take delight

36. And O soul, depart from us, for with us
Your staying is but misguidance

37. Step firmly on your path, crushing
Every hardship with resolve

38. For if you leave our bodies
You will ascend to the clouds on high

39. We flee from life to death
For our life has become a curse

40. Through it we seek salvation
From misery, and by it departure

41. For we, when we die, have a life
To heaven by it we ascend

42. My soul will emerge from the flesh's confinement
And find in the vast space its realm

43. The soul's survival after the body is a matter
Over which they disagreed - who knows the outcome?

44. Some said the soul remains
When it separates from the body

45. Others said the soul perishes
When the body's forces decay

46. Some people presumed it remains
While others denied its remaining is possible

47. We affirmed it while some denied it
And with the deniers we still dispute