1. My songs and melodies resonated in you,
O festival, despite the profusion of misfortunes,

2. And for whom shall I sing if I find you silent,
While ships of melodies fill my sky?

3. Shine like a star upon the face of nights,
Exuding glory and fragrant lights,

4. And pour upon the barrenness of life a downpour
From your luminous, milky goblet.

5. O festival, O hope of the sky when darkened
With events in seasons of dust,

6. Life flows in its night and day,
Yet you occupy the singular place in time.

7. They are filled with longing, their fervor prolonged,
For the joyous, delightful, chaste euphoria,

8. They make the rocks grow, none empathizes with them,
Their effort is but mirage.

9. So blow your waters upon their desert, and weave for them
From your enchanted light a gown of bliss,

10. And knock upon the broken-doored hut
A guest of its destitute inhabitants.

11. O Giver of Bounties, how many thirsty
On earth for bounties are wretched!

12. Tell those whom wealth has taken their minds
That they forget the victims of fate and misery.

13. Make not my day, in its glory,
A war upon the orphans and the poor.

14. The earth is under you so go across its horizons
And bring its far-off breadth closer to the near.

15. Ask the cities and villages about their state
In the crowds of desires and passions.

16. The chatter of the flock tells you
The prairie’s paths have narrowed around them.

17. The earth remains, as in your days, a stage
For the cursed, awful story,

18. And people are Cain and Abel, and none
Among them is Adam or Eve.

19. To them, Moses is a liar and a fraud,
And the Samaritan, believed.

20. They scramble for rubble, and perhaps
Drank poisons to gain a remedy.

21. They glorify peace, which is an ax
In the canon they established, honed for war.

22. A people who live on the blood of nations,
And nations that live without blood.

23. And courts for justice towering, lofty,
Wherein injustice is the master.

24. Their imbalanced scale is a hypocrite’s face,
And their builder among the weakest.

25. The mighty cannon’s judgment separates them
And destruction is their goal with construction.

26. If they rule, the sheep are a ravenous wolf,
And if they are just, the wolf lies slain among sheep.

27. In every valley peace has mourning rites
Like a madwoman weeping for the reasonable.

28. The universe therein and life held hostage
By the foolish nuclear leap.

29. The earth beneath you so go across its horizons
Until you are weary of roaming it.

30. Then unload your burden and rest
In the east, and stretch your flood tide.

31. For here are the lazy failures, circled
By the black folds of time.

32. They stand while the stirring celestial sphere revolves,
Going like the swift lightning.

33. They grew drunk on life’s delusions and surrendered
The ships of purpose to the struggling winds.

34. They denied glory though it is a trust
They inherited from their forefathers.

35. I looked and there was a lost people,
Rotten of life, torn apart.

36. Their tails in fortune like their heads
Despite difference of fate and mark.

37. They share disgrace for a morsel begging,
Whose nature despaired of giving.

38. Religion among them is an object of shame and disgrace
The glorious walks in bashfulness with it.

39. And disbelief is a philosophy infatuating
Those who wish to be called wise.

40. Nations who mourn their past at length
And sleep from a shining future.

41. Their glory is prey to worms,
And they count themselves living among the dead.

42. O Festival, O guest of time, are there hearing minds
Or do you not hear my call?

43. My people still think you are a delusion
Wandering amid ornaments and decor.

44. They put on you a new gown, underneath it
Bodies enslaved by whims prisoners.

45. They put on you a new gown, so tell them
The feast is of the heart, not garments.

46. And recite to them the story of glory
Whose pillars were built by ancient hands.

47. The glory of Arabism and eternity is remembered,
Intoxicating hearts, illuminating spaces.

48. Explain to them the meaning of life and tell them
Glory is for the red freedom.

49. Fill their hearing with a poet’s cry
Who opened with his hands eternity to poets.

50. By God, nothing save liberation and its day
Makes us of the happy.