1. Darkness fell, oh Layla, while among us
The spirit of death came like sustenance running out

2. Morning comes upon us, unable to shroud us,
And night leaves us, unable to conceal us,

3. The sun rises to give us life though we have
No provisions of life, so why, my Lord, give us life?

4. It illuminates a world full of evil, all darkness,
Like a shadow which contains no light within.

5. God created it with mercy,
And people created after God with mercy.

6. So which of them transgressed with injustice? And did they find
A nation that did not say after God: With mercy?

7. Oh Lord, it has become stubborn rock, impudent and insolent,
Not as You created it before out of clay.

8. Love of people is flattery, and I have lost
The eyes of those who love and flatter among them.

9. It is as if I am not human, resembling them,
Not counted or seen among the spectators.

10. Oh self, woe to you, settle down, stop raving,
They were and we were and what they and we willed.

11. And we will all one day die,
For that which makes us evil will make us equal.

12. It is villainy that tries them and makes them laugh
While virtue tries us and makes us cry.

13. And every beauty among people, if she suffers misfortune,
It is because of her virtues, not her equals.

14. Let not the happy gathering with
Smiles and laughter among us deceive you.

15. The face of the hypocrite is a hypocritical mirror
That makes ugly seem beautiful to the eyes.

16. If you cannot understand us, then look to our consciences -
Our consciences are nothing but our mirrors.

17. What have I saved from this world that delights me?
And how can our hopes be fooled by this world?

18. A weak old man whom old age has overtaken
And today I struggle to reach eighty.

19. Time has carved for him from his glory a pen
That does not stop trembling lines and writing.

20. Skin that contains a book when it was folded
From hardship, he named it “the miserable”.

21. I have carried from my misery what, were it
Lighter, would leave the mind insane madmen.

22. Misfortunes pelt me at every surprise
Though I remain steadfast, destroying and building.

23. It is as if I have the spirit of a volcano, never stopping
Misfortunes around me erupting volcanoes.

24. Until time dug my canal after a battle
Where youth was for us its battlefields.

25. How many periods for us in time passed
During which good omens came from our sides!

26. And how many ambitions in wishes we rose up
The spirit of heavens with flowers and our valleys!

27. And how much laughter in youth filled
The mouth of youth with trilling and melody!

28. We will pass away as youth itself passes, and none live
After it except our names.

29. So here I am today, bent over, adhered
To the ground, oh insects of the earth be my friends!

30. Cast down, people flutter around me with no loyalty
Or shelter among people to shelter us.

31. They clean the road of the urinating and do not
See among the roads of life the poor.

32. If they saw my place in their land as a rock
I would see them recognize it, not forgetting us.

33. Oh you whose feet stumble, if life is written
For you, it is from the hands of the helpers.

34. Layla, and you are not tears gathered
Beauty, purity, pain and sadness.

35. Layla, your beauty vexed the flowers and they celebrated
With youths perfuming and coloring.

36. Layla, did you pass by branches and nature wove
For them clothes, adorning?

37. Layla, and my passion - if only her jewelry
Was of pearls and not the tears of our eyes!

38. Layla, and my sorrow - if only you were an angel
Returned to the hands of God, not between our hands!

39. People have been dyed for money without religion,
So woe to those among whom the world resembled poverty!

40. What can virtue and piety do in their poverty?
And whose benefits do not enrich the destitute?

41. Oh what a waste, a waste I have become bent for it
That our lowest with money are our highest!

42. Poverty has judged its laws in the world
And money has judged poverty’s laws.

43. It is as if this which they call gold
Is a spirit of fire that does not stop burning.

44. If not for it among people, they would be angels,
But it has filled the world with devils.

45. We have been returned to the judgement of God, however He judges,
So comfort me from you, oh my Layla, with comfort.

46. But the beautiful one’s tears were startled
And she summoned from her eyes to the heart streams.

47. Alone, she has no cave to take refuge in
Except virtue sometimes, and wishes sometimes.

48. Her father passed away, and her mother passed away, and the earth
Folded over their love of lovers.

49. And her grandfather is like the remnants of life that were tossed
On the road of perdition, tossed like the disgraced.

50. So she knows no turn except sadness
And she makes no promise except to tenderness in crying.

51. She cries with no happy one to mourn for her tears
Among most people or between few.

52. A tear orphaned when the eye of the sorrowful sees
Kinship of sorrow in the tear of consolers.

53. Oh loss of love, money now displays it
With the display of humiliation in the face of the disgraced.

54. The dew of youth in the dawn of beauty hovered
Over the garden of love where it sees no winds.

55. Do not be surprised - after it God warns us
From the weighing of our deeds on the day of reward.

56. Love of wealth has made the world a trade
So justice is to make the next life scales.

57. She said to him, with the flowing tears overcoming her,
Barely able to establish words, explaining:

58. “Do not despair, father, I have attained for us
Insurance from the One we fear.

59. I have attained generous people, people of mercy,
Who look upon our faces joyfully, directly.

60. Among them is a troop doing good,
And they are to us like our shoulders.

61. If you want them as brothers, they do not refuse, and if
You want their support, they are advocates.

62. And if the turns of fate trouble you,
Shaking you, you will find in them pillars.

63. And if ailments overcome us intensely,
You will see in them the best healers.

64. A people who, when they enter the house of the poor, become
God’s blessings upon the miserable.

65. Praise God, the hands of people destroy us
But their hands come to rebuild us.”