1. People are alive as long as the earth is watered by their tears,
By God, the glutton drinks but is never satisfied,

2. The thirst of an empty stomach yearns for sustenance,
And some of the thirsty may find relief when soaked.

3. It is an incurable disease that people cannot remedy,
Though the bellies of the living on earth altogether could cure.

4. O Maker of this world, Your mercy has always been that
People in ignorance have transgressed what You decreed.

5. Everyone has a heart but by nature
Enmity creeps between one heart and another.

6. Though the same blood flows in all, I see greed
Suckling like an infant on people's blood.

7. Between desire and the self there is room for evil.
If the self does not resist it, it quickly advances.

8. The weak-willed, whose passions are unrestrained,
Are led by their weakness into submission.

9. By God, a man's sins belong to him.
Clay takes the shape into which it is molded.

10. More wondrous than all is that people suffer pain
When disaster strikes, then they inflict pain.

11. That one person deceives another, no favor returned,
Then grieves if he finds himself so deceived.

12. Among people are rights and wrongs.
But they claimed wrongs were rights.

13. God has allowed the world to follow its whims,
So the strong take whatever they wish to take.

14. Grant this oppression was a political ploy—
Who has said that oppression can justify oppression?

15. By your life, if politics built on anything
But people's hearts, its foundations would crumble.

16. If not raised on the backs of the weak,
It would never endure till the end of time.

17. If the weak had no allies, then who
Would mourn them except the helpless when aggrieved?

18. O Lord of the weak, they are to the mighty
As a finger weighed down by massive shackles.

19. Woe to these wars! Who do I see
Once peaceful now violently dispossessed?

20. I have no grievance, yet how many horrors
Have worse sources, if you could know their roots.

21. They set the world aflame, some supply the fuel
While others are the spark igniting unrest.

22. Like muddy puddles under clouds
Whose lighting startles them till they seem to crack.

23. When the wind opens a path into them
They are cleared, though fevers still shiver and flare.

24. When the sun rises they are dazed, unable to know
Whether it sets in the mud or if that is its dawn.

25. That aged woman has unveiled her face
And said to her family, stop and bid farewell.

26. Mayhem screams, repelling with its cries
The mouth of death whose name today is cannon.

27. Against a people who did no wrong except
Possess the keys when it was said "Lock it down."

28. They drank from death's cups in the madness of tumult,
The clashing of cup against cup echoes back.

29. How the mayhem craves release after confinement
That becomes a path to wider expanses.

30. As death descended, they prostrated as if
Fearing punishment, kneeling in dread.

31. As if death's robes were a mantle bestowed
Upon it, the spirits stitched into patches.

32. As if when soldiers encircled that bedlam
Thirsty for a trough of water from which to drink.

33. As if the battlefield opened its mouth in a moan
Of rotting corpses pleading to God.

34. Earthquakes and the woe of a land that shakes beneath,
Trembling until it threatens to crack.

35. When aid harms, what good is a blessing
That hurts the land multiple times its benefit?

36. Just so I see the world as an odious woman;
If she gives birth, the offspring is more vile.

37. As if this earth were a hanging heart
With no king whose greed does not rend it.

38. As if mankind has become a beast, I do not see
One support another, but rather each tear the other to pieces.

39. If the ruler who has none above him
Commands murder, no throne is beyond bloodshed.

40. The world will not be safe and compassionate
To its people as long as ambition lurks among them.