رثاء شعب — Muhammad Al Zubaire

I never thought that I would weep for him.

Or that my poetry would announce his death to the world.

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Or that I would remain after his calamity,

Alive, tearing my soul apart in elegies for him.

Or that those from whom I hoped for his rescue

Would be among his enemies on the day of battle.

He cast his heroes into the worst destruction

Because they fulfilled his dearest hopes.

He lived long in his darkness

Until every light faded from his eyes.

So night no longer hurt him with its darkness,

Nor did morning guide him when it appeared.

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If I survive, I have given him

The essence of my life, its past and its future.

I wished that I might die for him

Alone as a sacrifice, while all his people survived.

But death has an appointed time.

Not everyone who wishes for it meets it.

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After him I have no life, even if

The breaths of my soul remain to ransom and mourn him.

I dwell only in his graveyards,

And feed only on his tragedies.

Of him I am only a sigh that remains,

Wandering among the remnants of his remains.

When I stand, my age kneels with its full weight

Upon me, and its disasters drag at my crown.

And when I walk through it, its darkness casts

Nets of its snakes across my path.

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All the strength of the world gathered

In a stab that tore my chest and all within it.

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Is what I suffer a calamity, or visions of a dream

That drifted away and left its horrors in my soul?

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Our years of bitter struggle kneel,

Weeping for the struggle and the plight of its people.

Yesterday they stood proud against tyranny,

Exposing it as a disgrace before the world.

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Tyrants with no connection to them took fright,

Though none among them was their intended foe.

Yet those tyrants knew them as a flame that exposed

Those among them laid bare in their shame.

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So they resolved upon betrayal and recruited

Every hired and suspect person to plot against us.

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Thousands of tongues turned savage against us,

Subjecting us to every insult and distortion.

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Each mercenary, had he received our bribe,

Would have showered us with praise and acclaim.

Each tyrant, had we agreed with him

To betray the people, would have sent us congratulations.

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And each blind man whose sight we sought to restore

Had his nights burst upon us when we gave him his eyes.

And each unfeeling mouthpiece, if dogs barked

Through it, would have someone to endorse them.

They incited the people against the people and rushed

Upon them with every deception and disguise.

O our people, for half a century you worshipped them,

Yet they accepted no offering you made.

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You accepted them as lords and lived to grant them

Every reverence and deification.

You rose not one rank from the depths of bondage,

Nor tasted relief from what you endure.

Nor could your abundant tears

Cleanse a tyrant of his intoxicated arrogance.

Nor did you listen to us, a group who devoted

Their lives to advising and guiding you.

We build you lofty honor, and you demolish it;

We crush the tyrant idol, and you rebuild it.

We destroy your serpent enemy, and you bring him

Back to life; we light a lamp, and you put it out.

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You spent your life bitten, and here I am

Seeing a snake in your arms that you are raising.

You tell it of your suffering, though it is the source of your com—

—plaint and the root of the affliction you endure.

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Its sweetest wish in this world is for your tears to flow—

—while your head lives beneath the yoke.

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Your gaping, stinging wound it injects

With poison, then gives it medicine that cannot heal it.

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Do not waste generations' lives in the abasement of com—

—plaint; enough of its past for you, and enough for it.

Your cries at its doors do not move it,

Nor does your prostration at its thresholds please it.

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Your bowed, slaughtered neck cannot sate

Its violence, nor can your spilled blood quench it.

So stretch your hands toward the free, taking

Refuge among them from the bondage you endure.

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They died for you; then from their blood sprang

A generation kindled and sustained by memory.

It lives through the great calamity and makes it

A lesson to recite to coming generations.

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It would not accept the earth, were it offered as a price

For its path of struggle or its principles.

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Once, a word spoken by a tyrant would captivate it,

And a promise would deceive and tempt it.

Once, it admired a thief who generously gave it

A morsel he had taken from its mouth the day before.

Once, it took the crocodile for its holy

Saint because of the long stream of tears it shed.

Once, it gave its worldly life to its ruler

Because he promised it the next life.

Once, it recoiled from a whip waved before it,

Thinking the peace of bondage would save it.

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Today it has outgrown its collar; blood has matured it,

And its meanings have shaken it fiercely.

The tyrants thought that fear would kill it;

They missed how fierce anger brings it to life.

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They said, ‘The people are finished; we shall cast them

Into hell, which will erase and abolish them.’

‘Let every glimmer of their feelings go out,

And every pulse of their hopes be crushed.

Let their voice choke in the roar of blind

Flame, and the breaths burn in their mouth.

Let us drink water as blood from their massacres,

And sip wine as tears from their eyes.

Let us rejoice greatly at their funeral

And laugh today in mockery of their mourners.

Let us possess all that they once owned;

We have more claim to it than all their kin.

Let people forget them, so no mouth will say

On earth, “That was a people who died; we mourn them.”’

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Woe to betrayals: whom have they betrayed and killed?

Their brutal ruffian destroys them, and they destroy him.

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The people, on the day they awaken, strike harder

Than their killers and outwit their calamities.

They slumber so their slumber may deceive tyranny,

And so it may go mad with its own shame,

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And hurry toward its death,

And soon fall into its abysses.

The people's sorrows rose within my soul

And lifted it beyond what I had sought.

The millions who were killed granted me

The right to exact justice from the executioner.

I have a court for the worst tyrants on earth;

My poetry is its sternest judge in judgment.

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I summon every despot to it and drag him

From his throne beneath the weight of his crimes.

The worshipped idol bows its head to me

When I raise my voice to address it.

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Its greatest hope of me is that I spare it

My judgment and bury it in the grave of its past.

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The worst terror it encounters and hears

Is the voice of millions speaking to it in my poetry.

And if it sees history in my hand as I carry it

With all it contains to the world and recount it,

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It sees what it thought had died: the dream of a rhyme

From me, and grows ever more terrified of its fulfillment.

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It does not know that I shall pursue it

In its grave, whether its death deepens or its visions remain.

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I make it taste death through poetry I set ablaze;

Its rhymes are harsher than the death dealt by Azrael.

A death gathered from the peoples' hatred of

Tyranny, growing more terrible in its meaning.

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My slightest gesture drives it into the blaze and makes it forget

Hell, all that is in it, and everyone there.

I shall unearth sighs from beneath the soil as molten fire,

Ripened by centuries of burning.

And gather tears into a flood with which I shall remove

The rule of evil from the world and banish it.

I fight oppression, however brilliant its

Outward appearance, whatever names it bears.

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I lash the brow of Genghis beneath the whip,

And roast Nero's flesh on a spit.

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It is the same whether one comes in the people's name to oppress them

Or comes from London seeking to wrong them.

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" "

I expel Hajjaj Hajja in the people's name,

And in the people's name I twist Junbul's neck.