1. I delude myself with hopes, as if I were being sincere,
Yet I remain the most wretched by staying alive and happy,

2. And I yearn for the cheerful, smiling face of fate,
While my own face is stained with tears.

3. I allow one day and night to dictate to me,
Yet death is nothing but a sudden disaster or a fading lantern.

4. I procrastinate with my debts while my creditor is intent,
And I think well of myself while the evildoer confesses.

5. Deaths take people around me while my blood
Is what stains their clothes as it trickles out.

6. And I feel tranquil when my skin appears smooth,
Yet good health is not in the skin when the heart is slashed.

7. When the terminator of lives passes by to take souls,
He leans toward his children and prefers them.

8. I pretended to escape his glance,
But the blue eye of death still sees me.

9. My night of youth has led me astray, so where am I?
And the dawn of old age arrives, bare and shining.

10. The closest thing to a dead stick whose leaves
Have dried and peeled is me.

11. The slender tree trunks have been orphaned and betrayed,
So why should I hope for their friendship as I depart?

12. There used to be an expanse of hope ahead of me,
Now it is tossed behind me and discarded.

13. I have tasted the bitterness of fate desiring its sweetness,
So it clears itself for me at times and at others becomes muddy.

14. When a companion praises another companion with verse in my presence,
I sing with my own poetry at times and gesture at others.

15. I allow the dust to cover faces that used to anger me
When the piercing arrow of the sun hits them.

16. I stir it with my hands or dig a hole
Where the soil covers my heart and buries it.

17. You see the truth abandoned and spend the night fascinated
As this mirage dances for you.

18. The youth wishes the plain was his home
With money on top of it to lavish.

19. Capacious is the belly of one whose gains are hardly sufficient,
While the side of one who strains has scarcely room to breathe.

20. We bargained the world for our souls,
Yet it cheats us while the bargainer profits.

21. So we do not pasture out of excessive loss,
Nor is it content with the excess of what it gains.

22. Why, O world, when you are but pus
While we are lesions, do you withhold while we give?

23. Will you not knock on a breast the night does not fill,
And will you not avoid screaming in the morning?

24. Stirring up without a dam to protect from your rising,
Nor a harbor where you descend.

25. Arriving at the house you guest at,
With no fire lighting nor dog barking.

26. You have, from towns you cultivated and chose,
Desolate places you trod upon or plateau you slaughtered.

27. You have struck the shrine of glory where it belongs
And have deceived the eye of virtue where you aim.

28. And you have descended, speeding from Muhammad
Next to a corner that was not trampled before.

29. Upright yet crowded with hardships so it is no wonder
He is crammed with a crowd jostling around.

30. Asking, from any stab dripping on the back of perfection:
"By what bond is the brave one tied down and subdued?"

31. And the cutter of rope knots, when his sanctuary
Is chained, which lesson does he heed and allow?

32. And who was toppled from his proud abode
With his spear in hand not moving?

33. And words, though no voice penetrates the soil to him
Nor does the land's echo understand and explain.

34. Abu Hassan, as for hope, it has perished,
Yet the hoped for from you, in what you represent, is attained.

35. I have endured adversities, first defiant, then patient
For patience after you is seemly.

36. And I maintained ties with those I loved, then lost,
So I do not settle in a new place except missing you.

37. I remembered you when the wine cup was passed around and no advisor
Advised, nor did a tongue speak words explaining.

38. No devoted love sincerely swore by him
Kneeling proudly while his Lord watched.

39. An ocean that your mind once encompassed
Is now turbulent and a door once opened in you is shut.

40. A star came in Jumada at night
In a night where your height shows no dawn comes to you.

41. It asks about the bracelets of your house's dwellers
Snatched by the flashing lightning as it waves.

42. It was delighted by doves spending the night
Saddened by your loss - before they were joyous Miamis.

43. So it spent the night while the land's expanse was its supplies
Miserable in being satiated or sniffing the air.

44. In a night of misery whose darkness overwhelmed towns
Just as being without you overwhelmed the praying supplicator.

45. For the matter, you were the fearless lion, whether protecting it,
Else crafty foxes cooperate to divide it.

46. After you, the crack you used to guard widened
And the breach you used to mend spilled forth.

47. And the inability to compete was unleashed and equal
To ignorance, whether passing freely or settled.

48. And men who were diminished by your virtue rose up
Then they pretended to high morals and aspired to lofty positions.

49. Without a critic exposing their faults
And defects by merit being exposed.

50. They craved in what they lived, its duration being breached,
While they constructed in their brief time.

51. They leaned toward what you adamantly opposed
And wished for what you considered feeble, praising it.

52. They did not crowd together until after you the specks
Were cleaned from the water, yet they drink it and get inflamed.

53. May I be sacrificed for you - but can a living
Sacrifice equal one deceased you strove to aid?

54. You took refuge in your soul and the days' expanse constricted
Bearing you while it freely relaxes with the worthless.

55. You refused the disgraced world, knowing
When a livelihood slighted you, death is more comforting.

56. And longing reminded me of you - you made its taste sweet
And refined, yet now it is harsh and salty.

57. I have turned away from friends hoping
The loss will excuse only you.

58. You enriched me with love and support when needy.
From today, I no longer covet or implore.

59. I make excuses for myself because of you, that if
One fallen ill recovers a bit or the dawn breaks.

60. And I mend my days hoping to fix them
When the life you bettered is corrupt.

61. I asked the days about you hoping for gladness
Yet when they refused except being arduous.

62. I laughed at your obituary writer thinking
He exaggerated to commemorate your day playfully.

63. The quarter of my companionship has not diminished
And no home remains in my heart vacant for you.

64. One who inhabited it, from your good days, dwells,
Comforting the stranger of sadness wherever it roams.

65. When an ember of patience dies down there
A spark of remembrance ignites and burns.

66. And that moist tongue still remains in my mouth
Which once praised the like of you and today laments you.

67. It says, though not replacing you, that you filled
A vessel of bounty which now pours forth.

68. And if death had been repelled from me by poetry
Or if my worn-out teeth had some life or an eloquent one lived,

69. He would have escaped by glory to other than his people
While the estranged outcast is shunned.

70. And the asylum of An-Numan from his tyranny
Is in carefully selecting his justification and refining it.

71. And Urwah did not heed the corruptors of his companion
Nor was esteem given among Qais to the flattering sycophant.

72. And Ghilan Al-Muhari changed his intentional mistake,
Yet the she-camel saddle did not save him from death's termination.

73. But it is the obligation of loyalty and a worry
That troubles the heart to extract it.

74. I blamed my heart for you while grief burns it
And I rebuked the eyelid while tears wound it.

75. No wonder the tears' dignity declined
For it does not gather unless spilt out for you.

76. And I swear none matched you in what a heart
Contains of simmering sorrows and words prolonged in lament.

77. Nor was it legally ordained that I would see
Dust on you inparity while my body tranquil.

78. I am but one refraining from merit.
If I incline toward it crookedly, I stumble.

79. Your drinker, though the earth enjoys you,
Returns from the clouds returning to life and contentment.

80. A carrier of sweet water, floating toward it
While the open mouths of the empty buckets overflow.

81. When it weakens or its sharpness dulls
The aqueducts of the water wheels are equipped with buckets.

82. The wind's banishment makes them creak as if they are
Ships gaining speed or message pouch dove wings flapping.

83. Courageous as you or a steed in its water,
If neglect afflicts it, my eyes pour down.

84. So a grave in Medina may know I am
One who fulfills rain or one who ration rain.