الدمع بعدك ما ذكرتك جارِ

Even after you, my tears do not flow when I remember you, / And memory cannot reach you beneath the concealing dust of the grave.

O traveler away from a heart that let you go, / Now burning in the fierce heat of every regret.

I erred in my confusion—where is my heart now that you are gone? / Nothing remains within my ribs save the flame of fire.

That fading breath left upon my body a crushing weight, / As heavy to bear as any mountain burden.

What harm would Time have done had it left you with me, / To stand by my side in vengeance and in memory?

Since you were lost, nothing of the world can delight or astonish me, / Neither its darkness nor its lights.

It is all one whether the darkness of night covers me, / Or the morning breaks while you are journeying away from me.

Woe to that night which left me no single hope, / No expectation of comfort when the dawn approaches.

You kept me awake through six days before it, / And in them I was barred from sleep while my mourning became my only garment.

My little son, what use is their talk of patience? / Death's decree runs absolute across all creation.

Nor does any sanctuary bring me rest after you are gone; / This world is never a permanent home.

How often I carried you upon my palm as we set out, / And turned back through the best of shelters.

How often I stayed awake through the night from sheer panic, / Though my weeping and my vigils could not save you.

How often I cried out in desperate supplication for your healing, / Though my prolonged cries served no purpose.

How often I cradled you in the deep darkness, terrified / That some sudden disaster might befall you.

The beauty of your face made me imagine / That I walked in an untouched meadow at high noon.

If no artist ever captured your image for me, / You are preserved forever in the lasting lines of my poetry.

And if a narrow grave has hidden you from sight, / The entire earth today is to me the most suffocating home.

Or if you have been veiled from me, you still remain / Alive within the shifting currents of my thoughts.

I will never forget you until the hour I die, / For no moment passes me by empty of your memory.

I will lament you as long as I live, and when I pass away, / Let the reader recite my elegies for you.

What a bitter regret is the failure to foresee this loss, / The failure to calculate the full weight of my ruin.

Those who watch me have multiplied while my helpers are few, / And the malicious gloating of visitors burns deep within my chest.

So I recite the verse of one who tasted what I have tasted / Of parental bereavement and the loneliness of neighbors.

I live among my enemies while my son shares his neighborhood with his Lord— / How vast the difference between His neighborhood and mine!

O calamity that struck and shattered my spine, / Snapping my back with its sudden weight.

On a night when you parted from my sight forever, / And parted from me through a harsh decree.

No wonder the shadows of night slipped away from my sight, / For every star in the heavens has traveled onward.

I had hoped you would live a happy life after I am gone, / Reaching the furthest limits of old age.

I wished I could have tasted my own death before you, / But God's choice differs from mine.

I laid you into the earth with my own hands—would that / It were you who laid me to rest upon my bier.

My eyes looked toward you when I was utterly helpless— / Oh, how I wish that look was the desire of my gazing.

My hand fell short of reaching the palm of one who perished, / For human shortcomings always lead to failure.

Pity for him whose gaze complained to me silently, / When he could no longer find the breath to speak.

Pity for him laid out upon the bed of death— / Had I the power, he would rest upon my own right arm.

Yet the slightest touch only increased his agony, / So that even my poetry had to quiet its expression.

He moaned with the tremor of a frightened refugee, / Like a shivering bird that finds no place to rest.

Until I feared my own falling tears would hurt his frail body, / Pouring down upon him like a relentless downpour.

O tremor that struck him down and left my heart / Permanently stricken with terror and the ache of memory.

If only his final settling breath could have brought peace to my eyes, / After those fevered, restless struggles.

Pity for him who embraced me in the darkness, / While my sleep was reduced to painful snatches of twilight.

Pity for him whose singing used to nurture me, / And when he fell silent, my heart yearned all the more for his chatter.

Pity for him who would take my hand, / And return whatever was given him with eager abundance.

Pity for him chewing upon his sleeve, / Moist with bright pearls of saliva and drifting stars of tears.

O day when Death unsheathed its claws against an infant / Who had no strength to ward off clutching fingers.

O crisis that rose up and equated my own death / With continued life across the span of time.

Life used to taste sweet when he appeared to me, / But now that he is gone, even water tastes bitter.

Neither distance nor the passage of time can comfort me, / Nor the shifting of centuries and distant lands.

My regrets will not cease until I meet my own appointed end, / For so the decree of the Creator was written for me.

Nor can my weeping extinguish the inner fire, / Though my tears pour down like storm-rains in my longing.

For this fire of child-loss refuses to be quenched by ordinary water, / And tears are no match against such a flame.

Would that the prime of life might return for a single day, / Offering a father's life as ransom for his darling.

That I might be the one to ransom my son's years with my own, / Meeting death with the calm resolve of one who chooses it.

I used to endure trivial annoyances for his sake, / But today there is nothing left worth enduring.

Death and all future worldly desires have become / Exact equivalents in my desolate isolation.

Let the days do with me whatever they wish; / After this catastrophe, no further harm can touch me.

Let wealth abandon me, for I have been left / With no remaining desires or attachments in this life.

Whoever has tasted a parental bereavement as agonizing as mine, / Let him forgive me today if my patience fails.

Let him weep along with me and support my staggering weight / Through an overwhelming flood of tears.

Nothing shatters the pillar of patience like the loss of a child, / Cutting through resilience like a sharp, flashing sword.

The child dies only once, but the grieving father / Dies a thousand bitter deaths before him.

They made him pass through the agonizing stages of the death rattle— / What terrible, torturous turns of fate.

How rare are those whose life experiences and sorrows / Run parallel to the profound depth of my own.

Nor does drowning in sorrow offer any true model of comfort, / Nor does a long life provide any real shortcut to peace.

Human striving avails a person nothing in the end; / Every soul is bound strictly to its measured term.

Death is the ultimate destination of every living thing, / Claiming the wealthy and the destitute with equal force.

Those who went before and those who come after are placed together / Upon the same crumbling collapse of earth.

Yet the death of a child is uniquely devastating, / For he never even entered the training track of life.

The flavor of life is sweet only to those who have been spared / The agony of child loss, not to those who possess mere wealth.

Financial losses are like hair that has been sheared away— / It falls only to grow back in fresh cycles.

Then let the person whose children live rejoice in his life, / And let his drinking-water remain pure of all distress.

Some griefs in the corner of the heart can be swallowed, / While others remain like a sharp thorn piercing the soul across the ages.