1. Why do your eyes not shed their tears
While the soul is wrapped in its sorrows?

2. These hearts are bandaged with their wounds
Yet no tears moisten the eyelids.

3. It is not right that the eyelids transgress
On livers bleeding with their bowls.

4. The heart finds no rest in its anguish
Except in tears when the eyelids weep.

5. When the thirst of grief makes the inner self parched
The tears of the eyes quench its thirst.

6. You were forbidden to weep with your tears
And be generous in shedding their water.

7. Oh you who did wrong to a family, so the sons
Of the world were corrupted when time took its righteous ones.

8. When it persisted in eating away its pillars, it leaned
To shore up its ruins on its remnants.

9. So each day there is a raid in its shelter,
Hyenas follow each other’s howls.

10. The lion emptied its lairs of them but that did not
Stop it emptying the nests of their eggs.

11. Those are the wailings, the hearing cannot wake from
The hubbub of their bleating and their clamor.

12. The howling she-camel deprived of her baby,
The orphaned calf bleating for its mother.

13. My soul dislikes remaining alive though I see
Souls hovering around the remainder of their lifespan.

14. In its health it fell sick, and before it I did not see
A soul whose cure was the death of its body.

15. It found the bitter taste of demise sweet
And the pleasures of life a sickening flavor.

16. Does the soul crave life while the days
Pounce on it from the front and the rear?

17. Branches that greet it in the morning and then
Sorrows that keep it company at dusk?

18. My people were lured so their elders were made
Equal to their youths, their men to their women.

19. Among those who seldom thank in their composure
Or those who seldom keep their honor intact.

20. And calamity befell my companions, so its havoc
Sent the sons of my peers to their fathers.

21. And I remained after them like a palm tree
They had isolated from its fronds.

22. I yearn for the faces of youths, time has corrupted them
Sacrificing souls to its trials.

23. Lamps that illuminate the darkness, so why
Do they assail the darkness in the dust?

24. Prime pearls that were bleached, made black
When they donned its outfits.

25. Trained she-camels muted after supporting
The roofs of the heavens with their necks.

26. The winds of fragrant meadows were annoyed with us
As the winds appealed to us for their rain.

27. Tame gazelles that obeyed the fetters, so they
Were humiliated after their insolence and refusal.

28. I fed the land with decay before me, and had I
Judged it fairly, I would not have remained after redeeming it.

29. The world ransomed me with it, and had I been
Among the successful, I would have been part of its ransom.

30. Lamenting openly that which did not please
My soul with what remains of its ruins.

31. Informing ears of news that prevents
Eyelids from falling asleep.

32. News that if it touches an inner self
Our blood does not allow it to be stained.

33. The soul called upon tranquility but it did not respond
While the remains responded without its call.

34. Do you see the wailers recognize who they appealed to
Or who they elegized when they made their elegy?

35. They elegized the home of the ode for his virtues
And the verse of benevolence its verses.

36. A soul that if sacrifice were to be made for it, it would ransom
With my soul what people's homes contain.

37. And a gallant man whom gallantry acknowledges
That regarding its rulings, he is its jurist.

38. And the brother of manliness, if any other than him
Is counted among its soldiers, it counts him among its princes.

39. He reached the heavens with his lofty ambition
And attained the heights spanning its breadth.

40. So the children of the highborn lower their gazes
After him and restrain their arrogance.

41. For time has stripped the most beautiful raiment
From it and changed the beauty of its appearance.