طأطِئِ القلبَ للرَدى والهوانِ

Bow the heart to death and humiliation, / O intercessor of life and spirited pride.

Bow the heart, O heir of the Messiah, / And rescuer of ashes with blazing fires.

Bow the heart between death and death, / And toss upon the glowing embers of loss.

You did not stem your grief for the son of Nahyan, / The day the wailers cried out for Yasser.

A wail for a people plundered by nations, / And a homeland lost to the nations.

Jerusalem's knight—elegies enshrouded him, / With laments for the Nahyanite knight.

O maras ringing across Palestine, / Sudden tidings of death echoing far and near.

Church bells chanted a farewell, / And its griefs called out with the call to prayer.

The shrine of wounds in Jerusalem prayed, / For the lingering absence etched in the soul.

Zayed of the times, a brief moment before, / Amidst eras of regression and decline.

Zayed of governance, in wisdom and dignity, / Amidst the clash of madness with tyranny.

He who turned the desert into a promised orchard, / Of splendor, rebirth, and security.

Bow the heart while Arabism mourns, / Its noble Sheikh, the candle of the court.

A worshipper of God while tyrants around him, / Were seduced by the worship of idols.

A shepherd of people as brothers, not a mindless flock, / Crying out against the cruelty of herdsmen.

Bedouin in disposition, generous of hand, / To succor human with human.

To save the neighbor from stumbling, / And relieve the stranger from destitution.

Of Omarian traits in resolve and justice, / Of Arabian deeds and southern grace.

In the gulf of history, he built monuments, / And homes upon the banks of time.

He built in Egypt and the Levant as a helper, / Seeking aid from the mercy of the Merciful.

Lavishing gifts without ever boasting, / Responsive to the One, the Bestower.

Bow the heart, O majesty of rhymes, / And adorn yourself with patience before speech.

Endure what exceeds all endurance, / And contemplate what misfortune has dealt me.

Into the hands of sorrows I surrendered my crown, / And to the Messiah I yielded my scepter.

Who am I to possess the strength to mourn, / When laments without end define who I am?

From one martyr sent off by my martyrs, / To another whose boiling fire consumes me.

Loved ones depart one after another, / Hastening to populate my empty feast.

I crave a single moment of pride in my life, / I crave even a brief pause for congratulations.

The tempests of death have exhausted my soul and spirit, / Shattering my very foundations.

O Death, if only you would rest a little, / For what has wearied me of you is already enough.

O Death, it is you indeed that I suffer from, / Yet I suffer from life just as much.

My people's concern is my concern and my country's, / The sorrows of existence are born of my own.

Such is my nature: my pride surpasses my own arrogance, / And I turn away from the watering holes of serfs.

Such is my nature: my poems and my fierce spirit, / Ablaze with the flame of struggle in the arena.

My steadfastness in the thicket beside my lions, / While abandoning survival to the rats.

My refuge in God among kinsmen, / Who coaxed fertility from the barren soil of Adnan.

O Death, be patient; there is none among us, / Who would pander to the fury of shifting times.

O Death, be patient; none of us will yield, / To the crushing dominance of the flood.

We are the people of holy struggle, charge after charge, / Companions of the earthquake and the volcano.

No Roman Caesar's army could ever bend us, / Nor could Khosrow Anushirvan ever turn us aside.

Thus we are: we have never strayed from the straight path, / Amidst the deepening darkness of abandonment.

How often we stumbled and rose again, / Falling back only to gather for a second round.

Wild beasts attacked us from every direction, / And the wretched remnants of pirates kept swarming.

While those in authority among us sit idle, / Bowing in prostration before the wolf and the serpent.

Pen-wielding pretenders have wreaked havoc with empty wind, / Wielding dark meanings and blood-red ink.

Drunk on letters one moment, sober the next, / Echoing their own resonance in Satan’s assembly.

Word-jugglers in a circus of idle chatter, / Arabic in form yet Germanic in spirit.

They plunged deep into the basest of the base and clamored, / Until biblical verses turned away in disgust.

They stretched out, brayed, and thrust themselves forward, / With the bleating of deep-seated backwardness.

Deformed by a culture of their own distortion, / Pointing to their own foolishness with the finger.

The necktie alone is all they have added, / Far beyond past eras of creation and mastery.

They injected us with venom disguised as lethal ink, / In the name of a sacred, divine mystery.

We staggered blindly across rival sects, / And struck down Muslim and Christian alike.

We turned away from our roots and our covenants, / Growing alienated from our Qahtanite home.

This is a trial, and life is an examination, / Yet by oath we remain the thoroughbreds of the race.

By oath we shall cast off these tempests, / When the captain proclaims the shores of safety.

We shall pitch our tents as a people and a sun, / Upon the heights of mountains and in valleys.

We shall shade the pathways with sweet basil, / And adorn the public squares with daisies.

Our living secret is an eternal planet, / That taught the earth the craft of rotation.

We offered charity to the physical body, / And bestowed the sacred niche upon the spiritual.

We granted the Torah a spacious horizon, / And embraced the Gospel through the ages.

Our candles were lit with bright aspirations, / And our tears were illuminated by songs.

The torments of our motherland bequeathed to us, / The wisdom of wheat harvested from fields of darnel.

We are Arabs, and Arabism is a vision, / Not merely blood flowing through a vein.

We are Arabs, and Arabism is a prophetic meaning, / Of love and profound recognition.

We are Arabs, and Arabism is truth, / Beauty, and a luminous inner urge.

There is no place among us for a tyrannical outcast, / An arrogant despot ruling with a coward’s nature.

Nor anyone who oppresses the orphan, our father, / Or our brother, the cheater of the scales.

We have sworn a solemn oath to life, / To vie with one another in good deeds of civilization.

O Death, either show respect or launch your attack, / The span of life rests in the hands of the Ultimate Judge.

God's wisdom neither hastens nor delays our deaths, / Regardless of the violent surge of our sorrows.

The consolation of nations for those who depart, / Lies in what enduring goodness the righteous leave behind.

My consolation in Zayed and his brother, / Yasser of Jerusalem, is the chivalry of knights.

And my comfort is found in brotherhood and companions, / From the ranks of free men and brave souls.