دعينا إلى تأبين من مات قبلنا — أحمد الكاشف

We were called to eulogize those who died before us,

with fears already besetting us in life.

And what does a poet hope to gain from poetry,

standing so long above the graves?

More deserving than the dead of lamentation and mourning

is a captive debtor, overburdened by the banks.

And indeed, buying off debt with debt is a stratagem:

you either repay it in full or double it.

We sympathized but did not reason—how can we be saved,

when passions have overpowered those minds?

And we spoke, but heard no reproach from the one

we treat as an enemy, nor won the approval of the one we ally with.

And both sides' claims grew insistent, but we could not reach

those we go along with, nor those we oppose.

And we took our confidences to one who offered no aid,

who asks us what ails us, though he knows.

And those conversations brought no appointed time nearer,

nor did those embellished conjectures put it farther off.

Why, then, does the one for whom we raised the edifice turn away,

gazing at others within it and watching from above?

And if only we had from him the share his enemies receive,

as he has taken to making them intimates and treating them kindly.

And if only the keepers of the covenant found with him

as much affection as a caller receives when knocking.

And less grievous than the loss of kindness are earthquakes

that alter some of what surrounds us, and storms.

And people become equal only when all of them

lie fallen and crawling upon the timeworn ruin.