Sol 5.6

  1. A mother wards off her despair with her hope,

    for hopes placed in her children never end.

  2. Misery has become her constant companion, with no

    departure from her—alas for her misery!

  3. This, by your lives, is filial ingratitude itself:

    is this how a mother is abandoned in her affliction?

  4. Is this how she is left for calamities to assail,

    stretching out her hands to her own kin?

  5. A target for misfortunes, whose arrows never cease

    to plunge, straight-aimed, into her entrails.

  6. Stricken down, she is passed from one defender to another; she has

    nothing left but to await her death and annihilation.

  7. She weeps while we laugh, standing aloof; had we

    been human, we would have wept in compassion for her tears.

  8. She laments the calamities that have turned her comfort

    to misery, yet she laments none but her ignorant sons.

  9. O people of Egypt, you are her children,

    and yours are all the reaches of her earth and sky.

  10. If you ask what ails her: ignorance is your country’s disease,

    and part of the affliction is that she should die of her disease.

  11. And wealth, though it is among the trusts in your keeping,

    is an excellent, hoped-for remedy for her recovery.

  12. If her farmer builds life for his people,

    then in her artisan’s hand lies the completion of her edifice.

  13. Can no matchstick be made in our land,

    save one the eye sees among its motes?

  14. O people, is there no Egyptian needle

    to heal what remains of the soul from its torment?

  15. Indeed, the crafts are a means to life;

    so join forces, one and all, to revive it.

  16. Do not withhold, O people, if you are possessed

    of generosity; the world is nothing but its generous souls.

  17. Rise with the rising of the noblest, and unsheathe

    aspirations whose keenness even swords would covet.

  18. Pour forth noble deeds, and vie with one another

    in bestowing benefaction and winning its praise.

  19. Wealth was beyond my reach, so I came to Egypt and her people,

    freely offering poetry on behalf of her poets.

Sol 5.6