1. I implored you, O pens, is the world shaking while we sleep?
Rise, O shepherd, to your country - call it

2. If you have any words for the people
For long have you kindled your poetry around it

3. And from rhymes, a blaze and embers
When you roused it, you chased its slumber

4. It laughed at you with its drowsy eyelids’ dreams
And cried out in its ears, so it stirred

5. But stirs like the drowsy
We fear the swords of injustice while it is sleepy

6. And sanctify idols though they are rubble
And our nation is humiliated by one individual

7. Cattle cannot be guided to the likes of him
We give him our money and souls

8. And he sees us as traitorous villains
We build him a throne from which to rule

9. So he constructs a prison - we live in his shade, squeezed together
Our heads bow to him in fearful, forced humility

10. And our feet buckle under his shackles
How many tongues have praised him and tasted

11. From him the flavor of death, bitter and foul
How many a father sacrificed his soul for the imam

12. After him, his orphans starved to death
He sucks the wealth of his people and starves them

13. To fatten his own noble line
His stabbings are sacred - blessings, verses and laws rained down on them

14. The work of creation is blasphemy in his view
And whatever comes to him becomes law and order

15. Sons of Qahtan are slaves after their leaders and rulers worshipped them
Their swords used to discipline every tyrant

16. Without the sword, nothing can be done
They used to be the defiant ones, and the world belonged to them

17. As did kingship, banners and nobility
They descended on Yathrib and Iraq, and built

18. A great kingdom, unmatched
They were the first to storm the walls of Spain

19. Conquering and establishing themselves
In battlefields they were sharp swords

20. And in building empires, pillars
They were the throbbing pulse of Arabism - a revolution

21. That erased kings and cast down ambitions
They were the first to build the Umayyad throne

22. Al-Walid rose with them, and Hisham was honored
They were angry with Marwan, so fate turned against him

23. And time rose up against him
Their swords shone, lighting up history

24. With a horizon devoid of darkness
Once upon a time, they were the caliphate whose limbs

25. Were torn apart, and so Islam was torn apart
Qahtan, origin of the Arabs - since they were negligent

26. Of its life, they lived as orphans
Theirs are the towering mountains, and souls

27. Like the towering mountains - towering bones
Did they make existence or did it make them?

28. Or are they foundlings?
They were born giants embalmed

29. As the pharaohs were born who built the pyramids
They came out of history with the profile of the family of donkeys

30. Stampede on their foreheads and medals
They ask: Are we superior donkeys above existence

31. Or are those visions delusions?
Ibn Al-Sa'eeda - is there really paradise within it

32. Grown by time when it was a lad?
Where are the lofty palaces? Where are their

33. Beautiful ladies? Where are their famed kings?
Where are the seas with dams that seem amidst

34. The skyscrapers - bustling and crowded?
Where is the dynasty of Ma'een and Hamir?

35. Did they rouse the world for them or are they sleeping?
Did they race the continents in their leaps?

36. Did they orbit the stars and wander?
What called Qahtan? In their moments - misery

37. And in their words - sorrows
Ignorance and diseases and grave injustice

38. And fear and famine and imam
While the people are shackled in chains on their legs

39. And gagged in their eloquent mouths
Or frightened, not knowing whether

40. Prison or execution awaits them
Gathering is an eternal crime

41. Knowledge is a sin, speech is forbidden
One flees from his father and mother

42. As though connecting with them is a sin
The army occupies the countries - it has

43. No place but the huts of the weak
It loots and pillages whatever it wants

44. As if it were the caliph's sledgehammer
While the people live under the swords, torn limb

45. From limb, persecuted, squeezed together
Either they must flee their land

46. Or else life is a slaughter
They were scattered in the countries and destroyed

47. Its civilization - as if they were landmines
They ate up the soil of the land and monopolized it

48. While the needy stand fasting
As if they created the world and in their hands

49. The celestial bodies move
Grant that they created the worshippers - but is there

50. For those they created any tenderness or bond from them?
What would have harmed them, had they been

51. Like their noble ancestors?
But morals are sustenance, by which fate flows

52. And portions are determined
O people, rise up to struggle and resist

53. Sleeping through oppression is forbidden
You surrender to cruel ones lacking

54. Morals, law or edicts
Oppression will not cease to be a ravenous wolf

55. As long as it knows you are sheep
So speak up to prove you are human

56. And let him feel you see his injustice
And move so he doesn't think you are

57. Dead and see you as idols
The world has flown on, competing

58. While you have neither wings nor feet for the race
If you do not fly in the sky, how can you not

59. Walk when sheep and cattle walk?
Wavering, changing colors and hesitating

60. They cursed good and evil alike
We said: "Lift the whips from your bodies"

61. They said: "That would be a sin against the imam"
By God, it’s not the imam, they are obsessed

62. With the despot's whip and delirious for it
They sold their conscience for humiliation

63. As beasts are bought to carry heavy loads
And when greed resides in chests of beasts

64. Their bodies grow strong enough to carry sticks
They meddle in affairs they have no

65. Knowledge or competence of
They think religion only means

66. The prince's dirhams and food
They wrote - but their sayings are merely

67. A plague of forbidden and sickness
They dictated pages to bow

68. To the corpse they thought was divine inspiration
They prattle on, so rhetoric mocks them

69. And pens laugh as they write
By God, a man is not empowered by supporters

70. Who are like specters of darkness - riffraff
They pardon his tyranny while their countries

71. Are erased, crying in lament!
And sanctify daggers that have stabbed

72. An unhealing wound in the people's heart
They will be held to account, for the day of their reckoning

73. Draws near, evil for the unjust oppressor
The sycophants will regret like the remorse

74. Of an idolater when idols are shattered