أأنت مجيبي إن دعوتك باكيا — أحمد الكاشف

Will you answer me when I call to you, weeping?

Can my tears ever turn calamities away?

You fell ill, yet troubled neither physician nor visitor,

nor did evening companions and family see you complain.

You willed—with all a living man’s striving and a young man’s power—

to hasten the appointed hour and return among those gone before,

gathering all of life into your few hours,

so as to close a lofty chronicle of glory.

Lofty honors vied with you in glory and in stride,

and for glory you lived, while rhymes vied with you through the years.

A span of time passed when I did not journey even once

to you, though all I bore was longing’s inward pang.

How often detractors came to you accusing me,

though you knew there was nothing against me, nor anything for me.

Then, when whatever stood between us was folded away

and fate drew those distant aims near,

you departed before I could enjoy even an hour of your reproach,

or take even seconds of your favor as provision.

The caravan bearing the departed had scarcely gone far from me

before he went ahead, and your caravan followed after.

There you cannot hear what I am saying,

nor know what lies within my heart.

Must separation, every day, wrest from my hands

someone dear, and fold away a precious companion?

How can I now console myself for the one I have lost,

when death has taken from me all that yet remained?

The living have forfeited their former place in my eyes,

yet I am not one who lives forgetful of the dead.

O bird of the valley, O poet of the sanctuary,

you are gone, leaving hills and singing grounds desolate.

Your lovely nights have turned away—but whom have we now?

Who is there for us, or for others, to bring the nights again?

You traversed the furthest hoped-for reach of every good

in life, and met your final end content.

Your soul renounced dominion and was satisfied

with the desires you had fulfilled only yesterday.

Can the world be filled with all that you have said,

while your place within the world becomes empty?

As glory’s inheritance you left behind poems:

the inheritances of men pass away, but they remain as they are.

You sent them among all peoples as songs of praise,

going forth evening and morning, lovely as stars.

Such poetry could not be truly inspired

toward humankind except by a spirit pouring it forth pure.

You came with verses holding gardens within them,

and with proverbs holding songs.

The beloved king honored your standing in his eyes,

and consoled the men of poetry for your loss.

The government guarded its covenant with you in full dignity,

and the people rendered your reward in full.

Has your country ever honored a conqueror

as magnificently as you, or granted any warrior your station?

Envoys followed one another from every nation,

bearing sorrow and condolences.

Delegations came, representing the East—

its cities and its countryside alike in mourning.

They circled your grave in reverent throngs;

how many entered, for your sake, a palace and an assembly.

They lingered over your memory until it seemed

their faithfulness to it would bring you to life again.

Through their whispered converse they almost saw you among them,

though absent from them, hidden away.

Today this mourning assembly becomes a festival

for Egypt, and its elegies turn almost to congratulations.

Whoever hoped to behold, beyond his death,

another life—this surpasses all that you had hoped for.

Come, describe the abode to which you have gone,

and those whom you have now come to meet there.

There is every generous friend of yours—some

you knew in life and have now found dwelling there.

I see the poets of the age after you as equals, every one;

I am not one to be stirred into partiality.

Every poet has his own inward feeling, acknowledging

no prince or governor over his heart.

He does not send out poems seeking behind them

a reward, nor bargain over them with a buyer.

Through poetry, the wretched man in the East has returned

happy, boasting of it among all peoples.

You showed me all the generations of the earth

in their many forms, though I never left my country home.

You made me witness the course of life, and you still

show me—even in death—its far horizons and regions.

What imitator has not taken something from you?

What master of glory has not echoed you?

Your art is my art, your name my name; whoever came

to Egypt yesterday with your kin came with mine as well.

Kinship with you has ennobled me and increased

my pride in your great sovereignty over me.

And though I have attained a kingdom in poetry,

I shall never find another to replace you or suffice.