1. Is there an awakening after all this sleep
For those lying in atheism?

2. Why do they cling to the soil without living
Arouse them, the voice of the caller appeals to them

3. Do they have a return as religion promises
Or are the people without an afterlife

4. It's as if the dead are near us
Yet remote from us in distance

5. We parted and will meet anew
In the endless darkness

6. Shrouds do them no good, white or black
For whiteness is like darkness

7. Life perplexed you, yet it simply
Evolves from inanimate matter

8. It's intrinsic to it though progress uneven
It's the force of advancement and struggle

9. Electricity builds what it builds
On a unity of opposites

10. Brought down to earth on a ray
From the glowing planet

11. It doesn't die but hides like embers
In ashes, its fuel never depleted

12. Proof it hasn't died is the human race
Climbing on skulls of individuals

13. Children's lives are but
Lives of fathers and forefathers

14. So life willed that fathers live on through sons
Take care not to die, lest catastrophes await

15. No studious examiner of nature escapes
The charge of atheism

16. The finest people in every land
Oppress one another

17. I've never seen the weak but as
Food for their brutal, forceful cousins

18. Nature has grown boundless
With no confines or limits

19. Contemplate it and you see
Signs of purpose evident

20. I fell for life in the shadow of time
With a name and place in my heart

21. Tell me, O soul, who am I and what are you?
What is my origin and destiny?

22. What is my life and Allah's aim for it?
What is my existence and why was I created?

23. How did free will come about in us
What links the spirit to the body?

24. Teach me what you know
Perhaps I will find guidance, O soul

25. You, O mind, are in all my life
The support upon which I depend

26. Whenever I need guidance
O mind, you are that guide

27. I'm accustomed to being candid
So I'll say what I believe

28. If my honesty is a sin
It's part of my struggle

29. I've chosen hell as my refuge
And left paradise to the ascetics

30. This is me, I cannot change
Myself one day or my nature

31. I'm not about to reform myself
Unless some sudden disaster knocks me down

32. I remain a poet whose pillar
Old age has corroded and eaten away

33. I've associated long with men
Some were again my friends

34. Some draw near you, and you know not
Is this one peaceful or an enemy

35. These tears that fall
Are the essence of my anguish

36. Many excellent poems
Were prey to hatred

37. You don't know, when you hear my verse
If it is weeping or chanting

38. O poetry, you are my pride but
In lands far from my home

39. What a stranger by the Tigris' side
And what a rebel by the Tigris' side

40. They wounded my old heart
Then left my wound untended

41. Their wounding of my heart is torture
Worse than swords of Indian steel

42. One who has surrendered to the executioner
May sleep one night in peace

43. Why does talk of that surrender
Cast doubt over what I say?

44. Do not blame the misleading one
For the misled may be a guide