بكاؤكما يشفي وإن كان لا يجدي

Your two tears heal, even if they avail nothing; / so flow freely, for your peer has perished from my side.

My little son, whom these two hands of mine delivered to the dust— / oh, the preciousness of the gifted, oh, the heartbreak of the giver!

May God curse the Fates and their archers, / who deliberately target the very apples of our hearts.

Death's doom singled out the middle of my children; / by God, how it chose the central pearl of the necklace!

At the very moment when I gleaned goodness from his passing glances, / and sensed the signs of right guidance in his acts.

Destruction snatched him from me, so his visiting place became / far despite its nearness, and near despite its distance.

Destiny has fully fulfilled its threat regarding him, / while worldly fortunes broke every promise they ever made.

His stay between cradle and grave was so brief / that he forgot not the cradle's covenant when folded in the shroud.

Before he could quench his thirst, the water of his life was spoiled, / and he was robbed of its sweetness and its coolness.

The relentless hemorrhaging pressed upon him until it changed him / from the redness of a rose to the yellow of saffron.

His life breath slipped away upon our hands, / withering like a fresh branch plucked from the myrtle tree.

Oh, what a soul that rains down parts of itself, / like pearls falling from a snapped necklace without a knot!

I marvel at my heart—how did it not shatter for him, / even though it is harder than solid rock?

I would give anything to have been put forward before him, / and for the Fates to have struck their blows directly at me.

Yet my Lord willed other than my own desire, / and it is the Lord’s will that prevails, not the slave's.

It would not please me to have traded him for his heavenly reward, / even if that meant eternal immortality in the Garden of Khuld.

I did not part with him willingly, but was robbed by force, / and against the tyranny of accidents there is no protector.

Even if I were blessed with children after him, / I would remember him as long as camel-mothers moan in Najd.

Our children are like our limbs; whichever one we lose, / that loss is unmistakable and shattering.

For every place, there is a void that cannot be filled / by a brother's place, whether one is frantic or stoic.

Does the eye take the place of the ear after it is gone, / or can the ear guide like the eye when it leads?

By my life, my entire condition was overturned after him; / oh, how I long to know what his condition is like without me.

I was orphaned of all my joy the moment I lost him, / and amidst life's pleasures I became an ascetic.

O sweet basil of my eyes, my nose, and my deepest core, / oh, I wonder if you have changed away from our covenant.

I shall water you with my eye's water as long as it assists me, / even though watering with tears avails nothing.

O my two eyes, pour freely for me, since I have poured out for the dust / treasures far beyond what you are ever asked to yield.

O my two eyes, if you refuse to aid me, I will blame you; / but if you aid me today, you deserve my highest praise.

I would excuse you if you were distracted from weeping / by sleep, but what sleep is there for one tormented and exhausted?

O solace of my eye, I have prolonged your weeping / until I left you more irritated than eyes afflicted with ophthalmia.

O solace of my eye, if the living could ever ransom the dead, / I would have redeemed you with my very life-breath before anyone else.

It is as though I never truly enjoyed a single glance from you, / nor a kiss sweeter in taste than pure honey.

It is as though I never embraced you, / nor breathed in your scent in your play area or your cradle.

I am blamed for the sorrow I show openly to you, / while I conceal multiples of it within my chest.

Muhammad, is there anything imagined that could bring consolation / to my heart? No, my heart only grows hungrier for grief.

When I see your two surviving brothers, they appear / to be tinder that kindles the fire of sorrow brighter than a flint.

When they play in a playground that was once yours, they scorch / my heart like fire, without intending any harm.

They bring me no comfort, only a throbbing anguish / that they stir up without meaning to, while I suffer it alone.

And you, though isolated in a house of desolation, / it is I who live in the house of comfort yet feel utterly alone.

Whenever death dispatches a crowd / to the camp of the dead, I wish I were among the travelers.

Whoever seeks a gift from a beloved asks for a token; / it is a phantom vision of you in my sleep that I ask for.

Upon you is God's peace as a greeting from me, / and from every true raincloud heavy with lightning and thunder.