أبني إني قد كبرت ورابني — Abda Bin Yazid

My sons, I have grown old, and I am troubled by

my sight; yet there remains in me something useful to one who would set things right.

Though I perish, I have built up worthy endeavors

from which four noble legacies will remain for you:

a name that adorns you whenever honorable men are mentioned;

an inherited, preeminent nobility that will benefit you;

a record of standing firm on days of distinguished trial,

when honor is at stake and assemblies gather;

and gifts from earnings that will make you independent

one day, when greed constricts men's souls;

and counsel, issuing from my heart for you

as long as I can see among men and hear.

I charge you to be mindful of God, for He

grants cherished things to whom He wills and withholds them;

and to honor your father and obey his command:

the most dutiful of sons is the most obedient.

When the elder is disobeyed by his family,

his hands are tied in his own affairs—what can he do?

Put rancor aside; let it have no place in your conduct:

grudges rush headlong against the bonds of kinship.

Disobey the man who drives malicious tales among you

while posing as an adviser: he is poison steeped and deadly.

He sends his scorpions forth to kindle among you

a war, as the jugular vein sets the other veins throbbing—

fevered, whose heart's burning thirst cannot be soothed

by honey diluted with water in the vessel.

Never trust a people whose child grows to youth

among midwives, reared upon enmity.

Their enmity has overcome their reason,

and the festering malice within their breasts refuses to be drawn out—

a people who, when darkness closes over them,

send forth hedgehogs bristling and tearing with slander,

men like Zayd, when he corrupted his clan

until their unity scattered and they broke apart.

Those whom you regard as your brothers

would soothe the burning in their breasts by seeing you struck down.

Many a steep impasse in the affair of a mighty people

my two hands opened, until a way through appeared;

and many a stand before a disputant poised on hard hoof-edges—

whoever slipped would have the ugliest reproach fly after him—

I brought them safely out of it, straightening their crooked opposition

with the bite of the straightening clamp, while they were thirsty and hungry.

Then you returned dispersed, as though their afflicted leader were

in the cradle, mouthing the two nursing objects like a suckling child.

I know full well that my final dwelling is a pit,

vast and dusty, to which a bier will carry me.

My daughters will weep out their grief, and my wife,

and those dearest to me; then they will disperse.

I shall be left in a dusty place whose watering-place is loathed,

the wind sweeping dust over me when I am laid to rest.

So when I have gone upon my way, send

a man with a heart of iron, steadfast and resolute.

Calamities snatch lives away; indeed,

a young man's lifetime is merely entrusted to his family.

He strives and gathers, laboring with reckless devotion,

in deadly earnest, yet he will not consume what he gathers.

Then, when death arrives at its appointed time—

and every side must inevitably have its place of falling—

they cast him their farewell greeting, but he answered

no one; the keenest-hearing had become deaf to every call.