أجل أنا من أرضاك خلا موافيا — Ismail Sabry

Yes, I am the one who pleased you as a faithful friend,

and would please you among those who weep, if you were aware.

And my heart, that sweet spring, still remains

pure, as when you tasted love and affection from it,

except that sorrow visits it whenever

it sees you far from the threatened pool.

And it stumbles amid certain ordeals as it walks

toward some of what it loves, then returns bleeding.

And if a flock of joys seeks it, it finds no

place within it free of care's burning pain.

Come, you two, comfort me with consolations, and persuade

my heart to accept them as consolations.

Otherwise, you two, help me lament and weep;

for your plight is mine, and what afflicts you afflicts me.

And your weeping does me no good, except that I

love tears of devotion and a faithful man.

O Mustafa, by God, your sleep has troubled us.

Would one like you consent to sleep night after night?

Speak, for the people around you have bowed their heads,

and voice your opinion aloud, O orator of the community.

Indeed, after such long silence and absence, they have almost

come to think you dead—the timbers of the pulpits.

And they would weep for you, were there not within them a remnant

of that resounding voice to console them.

Has your eyelid been bound to slumber, then,

by an alliance—or have you felt safe from your enemies?

We have lost you as an armored warrior loses his weapon,

and as a traveler through the darkness loses the Pole Star, his guide.

And we spent the night, our tears watering the groves more richly

and offering more succor than the rain pouring down.

And were it not for a legacy of your hopes we possess,

a noble one—we would have mourned our hopes when we mourned you.

Death folded you away like a book that contained

in its pages meanings of every kind of glory:

keenness—when bright swords proclaim their lineage,

we bristle if some people call you Yemeni;

and judgment that dispels despair, as despair casts

over the horizon a coal-black, pitch-dark night.

Whenever we plead our case and you are not among us,

we recall them both, so that we may plead our case well.

If only, then, after baffling every rival in debate,

you had been content, and had not baffled the physician treating you.

And if only, while defending Egypt, you had not poured out

with the ink a heart that God knows was precious.

Indeed, the physician's devotion and skill were wasted

in vain, so he mourned the glory he had hoped for.

And those medicines seized no opportunity

in which to show people Hippocrates' excellence plainly.

He salutes you, a sword now lying sheathed in the earth,

which Truth once wore at its side, keen-edged.