هتف الموت وهو ناب وظفر — Harun Hashem Rashid

Death cried out, all fang and claw:

No escape from my grasp, no escape!

And the winds howled, screaming, and blew

as unbridled tempests that would not rest.

And reckless thunder fills the mouth of the universe:

a rumble across space and a roar.

And the sky vanished, leaving nothing but

clouds that send forth threats and warnings.

Then mercy turned into calamity,

and the universe is silent and grim.

And the water runs wild, engulfing the earth,

and its unceasing wildness exceeds all bounds.

So it brought down houses, sparing no fledglings,

nor did bitter weeping hold it back.

Many a mother bent over her firstborn child

and clasped him, herself all fear and terror.

She pressed him to her breast for fear of death—

and can a breast ward off death?

And an old woman—the wall fell upon her,

and suddenly her demolished house was a grave.

And an orphan whose father died a martyr—

so, after his father's death, he is all tears and poverty.

The storms' crashing impact demolished a house

that was, in actual truth, a burrow.

And a girl with a wounded heart weeps

for the loss of her secluded chamber and all it held.

And little children, displaced and without family,

flung themselves onto the road and moved on.

And many awoke bewildered,

with no refuge and no place to settle.

They cried to the sky for the rain to be held back,

but how could a sea ever be drained?

Would that I knew: where are those who cast them

into a hell of torment and fled?

Where are those who walled in houses of clay

and said, 'Here is a pleasant place to dwell'?

They dwell in their homes, intoxicated,

and their drinking companions are beauties and wine.

And hundreds of pounds, they said,

were payment for what they had done, and thanks.

Yet they, the criminals, had brought evil,

and said that it was good.

These are John Bull's offspring; from them

oppression and outrage engulfed our East.

They move through the darkness of night,

though dawn has already torn the deep darkness apart.

So the peoples have awakened today; guiding

their steps toward greatness and justice is vengeance.

So a blaze in the land of Iran roasts

every colonizer who passes over it.

And a roar in the land of Egypt proclaims:

It is Egypt, the pearl of the East—Egypt!

She will cast the oppressors into the sea,

and victory will bear her aloft to glory.

O believers, the tyrant has run wild,

for his ears are deaf to the truth.

Save, save those of us who remain!

For here death crouches, firmly settled.