1. My friends called upon me while rhymes were ailing,
And the knots of misfortunes had bound my tongue.

2. So I came while God knows what sorrows I bore,
And what griefs that had wasted and distressed me.

3. I grew weary of standing amongst you expectantly,
For a mount I had parted with which saddened me.

4. Does sorrow pierce a new wound in my heart each day?
I feel I have lost my soul and mind.

5. The agony of sorrow I have endured suffices me,
As does the day the Imam was denied me.

6. My loved ones, family, and friends have dispersed,
And God's hand has delayed my time, so I await my hour.

7. I've no friend should I stumble, to raise me,
Nor kin, should I weep, to join in my plaint.

8. Do I not seem to have fallen short in keeping company?
The faults of the likes of me are a traitor's crimes.

9. So do not blame me on the day I meet my end,
For I know what the two burdens do not ignore.

10. Gone from us the day he went, with no peer
Among the excelled elites, nor a second.

11. And in my care are deposits from Yaziji
And another from Zaydan, who preceded me.

12. Oh how I wish I knew what beneath the soil,
They would say if they met and remembered me!

13. As they glanced around amongst your crowds,
Not finding in either gathering my place.

14. Does it befit me, such dereliction, when
They knew me not as one to break a vow?

15. My loyalty called me that day, and I was not
Stingy, but the poetry disobeyed me.

16. Sorrows will silence every eloquent one
Who freely composes poetry and prose.

17. Can I forget them when knowledge atop their burial
Mounds has collapsed from its pinnacles?

18. And how much I gained in wisdom from the crescent's Lord,
And how much flair from the Lord of Brilliance my expression gained!

19. O Zaydan, do not go far, such is an ailment
With which the elegists beckon every beauty.

20. Yours is the lasting influence, even if you are far,
For despite death, you are near.

21. And O Zaydan's grave, you embraced a historian
To whom the youths' secrets were revealed.

22. And a mind—though passions for riches—for he
Dove for pearls in Oman's sea.

23. And Damascene resolve, wherever he went,
The pride of India and the fervor of Yemen.

24. And a palm, when it toured the parchments,
Swaying all countries in awe of it.

25. It immortalized the Rāshidūn in speech, as if
A Jerusalemite youth, grown from the Haramain.

26. I asked the guardians of prose to count his merits,
But my poetry fell short of appraising two hands.