1. This elegy that my sorrows dictate
I write with tears filling my eyelids

2. O Beirut, why have you wounded me to the core when
I was thrown into the meeting place of my memory and tenderness

3. Indeed, what startled loved ones startled me
O house of my intimacy, how endless is my crying over you

4. Those church bells in my heart clang
And my ears echo, tormented, with their ringing

5. A house, nay forty houses, all collapsed
Razed in every direction, devastated in an instant

6. They crumbled and showed us the evil of what they did
To God's handiwork, the work of the builder

7. Woe to her, from disasters with no songs of joy in them
How can the bride rejoice over the collapse of her pillars?

8. The state of the orphans and the widows in them
Kindles sorrow in the breast, like the lighting of fires

9. The shadows of the working men have vanished; for them
Only the remains of deprivation were left behind

10. And the breadwinners were distracted from their pursuits
For a while, though time is neither heedless nor oblivious

11. So they were hurried off by general destruction
Which scattered them though they were not expecting it

12. It carried out on them a decree which shook them
On weak women and little children

13. O people of Lebanon, your virtues still
Respond to those who call, O people of Lebanon

14. In distress and oppression, your steadfastness did not fail
Nor your gallantry, whether sound or afflicted

15. Those hearts, how pure is their content
God has molded them from generosity and kindness

16. So I do not worry about those who cry out for help
While all of you are sympathetic and helpful

17. This is because my time lacks breadth
Urgency, not extending beyond my sorrows

18. If the senses pictured their meaning for their viewer
The soul in them would reveal bloodshed

19. I did not mean, my brothers, to arouse passion with them
But they are like a lantern for my brothers

20. May God reward them well for what they have done
And do, never flagging or growing weary