1. Come now, you who are the chosen essence,
Remaining patient in the face of fate's deadly cup,

2. Though you may lag behind from the abode on high,
Racing to the heights has long been your motto.

3. You were first to the afterlife before this life,
Just as annihilation comes before perpetuity.

4. You left behind the jewels of great deeds as ruins;
Today they shine as beacons with your repose.

5. You left behind nights of life's darkness
That now seem like dawn with your Lord.

6. Unless that life was overly long,
A single day for you would equal a year.

7. Or you bid farewell to loved ones too soon
In the morn, so your life alone held lifetimes.

8. How much in your exuberant youth seemed old age,
And on it, without graying, was dignity.

9. You chose departure when your homelands
Most needed you, in all their regions.

10. Had we not known your loyalty, we would have said
"Indifference" and "estrangement," but this was fate.

11. You sped to a house of angels, calling,
And your way is swift in matters, even there.

12. They found you more deserving of Heaven, though it pained them
The day you became their neighbor; what a fine neighbor!

13. The heavens envied the earth for your sake
And some of its brides wept for you.

14. The verdure won you from our dusty grayness
That cries your loss, its tears rivers.

15. No wonder we grieve your noble loss,
For death takes all glory as booty.

16. Or that you fell to the arrows of fate,
Since the targets of great men are great.

17. Your plight was no personal loss, but rather
A group that scatters and a side that crumbles.

18. You were a beacon for your folk; a group
Guided by your guidance, if they went or stayed.

19. Whenever they saw you before them,
They followed the right path, and if misguided, sought your path.

20. They recalled your father's place in his day
As a monument among monuments.

21. But you surpassed your father - sons are their fathers' secrets -
Not content that word of your glory was enough,

22. That when men pass on, their legends pass too;
So you rose to the sublime through your spirit,

23. Since excellence cannot be diminished.
You became a beacon for the noble Arabs

24. Lit by your glow, whether settlers or nomads.
With resolute, deep-rooted gallantry

25. Beside which the gallantry of the noble pales.
Your traits among the people were singular -

26. Poetry itself stands in awe.
Eulogists could not do you justice;

27. Sometimes the tongue falls silent and relics speak.
Beneath it the soul cowers, crouching

28. At a butte it sees as unassailable.
It faces tribulations with the heart of a hero;

29. Ever deeming the greatest events as small.
It made your country forbidden to a single tyrant -

30. In truth, a belligerent, fierce transgressor.
I imagine the horizons without you now empty,

31. As if those plains have become deserts.
No coast is a coast when you left its sands

32. Captive to the tomb - no home still home.
Dear uncle Amin, it pains me that

33. My hopes of your proximity are gone, vanished.
I had hoped to see you, but instead,

34. No evening remains after your loss.
Throughout your long absence you were the focus

35. Of my sight though not seen, the heart's sight.
Forever I conversed with your spirit as if

36. We scorned the passage of all time.
No thought of Beirut crossed the mind

37. Without your image arising in memory.
Could it be otherwise when you were its pillar

38. And the world turns upon its poles?
Dear uncle Amin, I grieve you in verse

39. While my tears flow freely like pearls tossed.
Weeping has blinded me, so my eyes

40. Pour copious, streaming tears.
Dear uncle, it pains me that you passed

41. While Phoenicia and its maidens still gleam.
And the people curse intermittent flashes

42. That glow and fade while hearts burn.
They recall you at each and every ordeal -

43. At my side history sings like planets.
For your view in tribulations was a piercing sword,

44. And the dew of your hand a flowing stream.
You were the refuge and fortress of hearts,

45. The blade and edge of minds.
Your pact with your comrades was to recall

46. The nation's right and that you are all free.
The nation's right is to fully possess

47. Its land, overtly, without obscurity.
Either our soil is purely our own

48. Since we are its birds and this is our nest.
Depart not, Ahmad, for if you are gone

49. Beneath the earth, Ahmad still has partisans.
Gleams of salvation loom - dawn breaks

50. After the darkness - and the dawn comes fast.
The misguided deemed our country as plunder;

51. Those infernos kindle Hell's blaze.
Those with sights on the Euphrates and Tigris -

52. The course of the great rivers is torrential.
Those peddling Jerusalem are money-changers -

53. In our realm, money-changers have no dinars.
Their forefathers made our forefathers' lands

54. Nations, so their winds met hurricanes.
If they recalled past events,

55. They would not scorn our abode.
But they deemed time to be secure, as if

56. Between them and time were barriers.
And imagined those eras were gone, never to return -

57. No repetition, no echo.
Nay, by your Lord, their reckoning went astray!

58. For each people there is rise and fall.
Time is ever-turning, ever the same,

59. As long as only the One Firm lasts.