إذا كان أولادي وأولاد أولادي — Alluah

When my children and my children's children

Are fathers of children and sons of grandfathers,

And my molars, my hearing, and my sight have weakened,

Dwindling manyfold from what the reckoner counted,

And now I have a third, and it is my guide—

What remedy is there for one who walks slowly, led by a rein?

And only yesterday I was a guide to Time,

But now my staff is one of my guides.

After I turned gray, my enemy became one who pities me,

And my soul's beloved became one of my assailants.

What, then, of my pleasures and my hoarding for my heir,

My stinginess over my hoard and my lavishness in exhausting it?

When sixty years have passed away

Of my life, and the camel-driver chants these seventy onward,

And my father died before me, my mother, and their peers,

And my peers; my children died after my forefathers,

And every day and night, toward the graves,

One leaves this life for them at evening, another at dawn.

What a wretched blessing it is amid all this!

And oh, the sorrow of a life of hunger and hardship!

This world, though adorned for us,

Is, by your life, nothing but a hunter's snare.

And death is nothing but a huntsman with its snares;

What person of this world is not ensnared by it?

We keep its company, perishing in pursuit of its wealth,

Yet whatever we have acquired, we have gained no provisions.

Hopes burden us until we obey them,

To demolish what is set right and build up corruption,

Until we are caught by our sins, held in pledge,

And the herald called when no one remained to ransom us.

The summoner of death visits us every day,

And we have no means of driving the visitor away.

We shall depart to join the departed, as neighbors—

Hostages of graves, prisoners in fetters,

In a desolate land, with no beloved to keep us company,

Nor any visitor among them making the customary visit.

How many a forerunner among them has gone on toward the Gathering,

And no bodily remains of him are left.

Ah, if only I knew what I shall meet and harvest—

From trees, or from the planting of right guidance?

After the Gathering, shall I come to the Pool,

Or shall I be barred from being brought to it?

Shall I be among the noble delegation to its Lord,

Or among a delegation whose delegates are the worst?

Shall I abide forever in the fire of Hell,

Or in the gardens of eternity, beside the Guide?

God's blessings be upon him, living and dead,

And upon the companions, people of bounty, the radiant faces of the assembly.

Oh, what two abodes: an abode of happiness,

And an abode of misery, with sorrow and barred doors!

I place my hope in You, O God, longing

For pardon through Your kindness on the appointed day.

And if You give me drink, O God, through mercy from You,

Then quench the thirsty one's burning thirst with its sweet-flowing water.

If I have not spent in charity, nor been humbly devoted,

So through affirming Your oneness I hope for nearness and recitation [context unclear].