كذا فليجل الخطب وليفدح الأمر

Thus let the calamity be momentous and the affair crushing, for no excuse remains for an eye whose tears have not flowed.

Wealth itself died after Muhammad passed, and travelers became too preoccupied to continue their journeys.

He was nothing less than the wealth of the impoverished, and a treasure for anyone who woke up possessing none.

Those who sought his generous palm never imagined, when it poured forth, that hardship had ever been created.

Ah, for the sake of God, the mountain passes left deserted for him, and the frontier breaches torn open!

A youth for whom, whenever tribes wept tears of blood, stories and memory smiled in his honor.

A youth who died amid blows and thrusts a death that stands in place of victory when victory eluded him.

He did not die until the edge of his sword had died from striking, and the brown lances grew weary over him.

Escaping death was easy for him, but bitter self-respect and a rugged disposition drove him back toward it.

A soul that detests shame so intensely that on the day of terror it looms like disbelief, or very nearly so.

So he planted his foot firmly in the pool of death and told it, From beneath your very soles rises the final resurrection.

He set out at dawn with praise woven into his cloak, and did not turn back until his shrouds were earned as divine reward.

He threw on the crimson garments of death, and night had not fallen before they turned into green silks of paradise.

On the day of his passing, the Banu Nabhan were like the stars of heaven from among which the full moon has plummeted.

Condolences are offered for one whose loss leaves loftiness itself in mourning, wept over by generosity, valor, and poetry.

And how could they find patience for him when he marched so far into death that both he and patience were martyred?

A youth of sweet spirit, not from mere fragility, but from the towering pride that disdained ever being called arrogant.

The cavalry stripped him away while he was their protector, and the fire of war stripped him while he was its burning coal.

The shining, flashing blades in battle used to be sharp; now, after him, they are broken stubs.

After the twists of fate have folded away Muhammad, will the garments of generosity ever billow with fragrance again?

When the roots of nobility's trees are hacked away, upon which branch can fresh leaves ever be found?

If treacherous time is hated for causing his loss, I remember a time when time itself was loved for his sake.

Even if its days proved treacherous to him in the hour of battle, treachery has forever been the very nature of days.

If the tribe of Tayy is draped in this calamity, neither Tamim nor Bakr remains stripped of it either.

Thus we never cease losing a fallen soul whose loss is shared equally by the nomad of the desert and the dweller of the town.

May the rain shower a rain-bringer whose physical form the earth has embraced, even if no clouds or drops accompany it.

And how can I burden the clouds as a favor by watering a grave when the ocean itself lies within his tomb?

He passed on with garments unstained, leaving no meadow on the morning he was laid to rest that did not wish it were his grave.

He rests in the dust—he through whom the dust itself lived, and whose overwhelming bounty flooded the whims of fate.

Upon you rests the absolute peace of God, for I have witnessed that the truly noble and free man knows no mortality.