1. I sleep while misfortunes lie in wait,
And the guide of death allows no escape.

2. Each day and night bring tribulations
That annihilate our group and exterminate.

3. My two friends, come mourn, long-suffering,
For I have lost hope, the meeting is far.

4. Do not think that parting is transient
Or that one underground can return.

5. Have you seen a protector beyond whom is devastation
Bring glad tidings of his return, O courier?

6. You left in my heart on Eid al-Fitr
Wounds of sorrow that no Eid can heal.

7. You took away Hassan though time
Had just clothed life in new raiment.

8. I remembered a bygone era, never to return,
So I began to express agony and repeat my lament.

9. I send up my sighs to a star I saw
Pelted with palm fronds from the plain.

10. Alas for one whose time did not bring him victory,
As pigeons attacked him at dawn!

11. Oh, would that I knew who will rise to defend him
While his closest of kin from him aloof remain.

12. Though we cared for you, by ill fate you were bound,
Deceived by eyes whose glance feigns affection.

13. Dear to us that you dwelt in abodes
Where free and slave are equal.

14. You stayed in a land comfortless,
Though tribe after tribe of visitors flocked to it.

15. A noble stranger like you is not one
Whose ideas the common people grasp.

16. Now I in the land of exile remain alone,
Unique in my consolation, peerless in my agony.

17. I drove away my family and my clan,
Crying the disaster is too great to bear!

18. Is it not grave that I in a group take joy
While you are alone, fettered and shackled?

19. Our weeping matters little if a year
Passes with weeping filling it completely.

20. No eye of any man since your loss is dry,
But an eye that cannot find you knows no tears.

21. Who can forbid tears now that
Death is seen frolicking in the garden of youth?

22. You were a branch whose table
Almost caused mountains to shift.

23. How can a branch mid tempests stay upright
When tranquility is not hoped for from them?

24. If my soul laments him, toward others
My heart is resolute, cold and calm.

25. Tears are not blamed for every tragedy,
Nor is patience over all men praised.

26. You ridiculed my consolation after sorrow
Assaulted it until it died a martyr's death.

27. Even if I had the firmness to show patience,
My ardor and custom of faithfulness returned me.

28. I gave you, my brother, the pure rain of clouds,
While my tears for you still pour down.

29. In those sheets, your shroud bars
My eyelids from rising to such heights.

30. So while you sleep underneath the soil,
My sleep above the soil wanders destitute.