رَجَعْتُ لنفْسِي فاتَّهمتُ حَصاتِي

I turned inward to myself and blamed my own discernment, then called upon my people, leaving my life to fate.

They pelted me with accusations of barrenness in my youth; would that I had indeed been barren, so I might not have grieved at the taunts of my enemies.

I gave birth, but when I found no men worthy or equal to marry my brides, I buried my daughters with my own hands.

I encompassed God’s Book in both its wording and its ultimate purpose, nor have I ever grown narrow-minded in explaining its verses and admonitions.

How then can I grow straitened today when describing innovations and coordinating names for modern inventions?

I am the ocean; within my depths lie hidden pearls. Have they ever asked the diver about my shells?

Alas for you all! My beauty wears away and wastes, yet you—though the cure is hard to find—are my only physicians.

Do not surrender me to the hands of time, for I fear for you the day my death arrives.

I see the men of the West possessing glory and impregnable might; how often do peoples grow mighty through the glory of their languages?

They brought marvels to their people through sheer ingenuity; would that you might bring forth mere words!

Does a croaking crow from the Western shore delight you, calling for my burial in the very springtime of my life?

If you were to read the flight of birds for omens even for a single day, you would realize the stumbles and fractures hidden beneath.

God bless the bones resting deep in the Arabian desert, to whom it was unbearable that my pillar should ever bend.

They guarded my affection through decay, and I have guarded theirs within a heart of everlasting sorrow.

I boasted before the men of the West while the East sat bowing its head in modesty before those weathered bones.

Every day I see a perilous slip in the newspapers, dragging me closer to the grave without a moment's pause.

I hear the uproar of writers in Egypt and I know that those who shout are my mourners.

Can it be that my people abandon me—God forgive them—for a language that never even passed through trusted transmitters?

The contagion of the Franks crept through it just as serpent venom crawls down the channel of the Euphrates.

It emerged like a garment pieced together from seventy patches, jarring in color and completely mismatched.

Before the assembly of writers, while the gathering is full, I have laid out my hope after fully airing my complaints.

What a life it is that raises the dead from decay and causes my remnants to sprout anew from those tombs!

And what a death that knows no resurrection after it—a death, by my life, that cannot be measured against any other death!