1

You complain, my friend, from the vicissitudes of time,
And you forgot the night and darkness in your body.
It is the seed that gives nothing but that within it.
It is the soul of the root and stem and the origin of the branches.
 

2

If it were with genes that have ebb and flow,
Expect fruits with bitter taste in your mouth.
Is darkness a light, and abasement
enlightened intellect? look with the eye of intelligence.

3

With Our hands we made a sad world.
We raised ignorance and illusions as terrorized flags.
And we allowed the mind to seek guidance of suspicious ideas.
And so we planted death and hatred in a fruitful land.

4

In vain you call for reform when the soul is sick
In vain you look for an ego residing in the bottom.
When you run after unfruitful dreams and hopes,
You harvest the wind and reap nothing but defeat.

5

Do you blame the cruel fate in harvesting innocent souls
And it is inside us which borne the sin?
Some of you hate others, the jealousy of cretin soul.
Do you hope to have affluence in the remnants of dunghills?

6

Why the distress and sorrow and weeping?
We know nothing but some of the secrets of life.
The mind is unable and the intellect went astray in this darkness.
So leave thinking aside, it is a killer.

7

But it is a pity to think that the soul will perish,
It is energy which knows nothing but eternity,
And it is the bird rejoicing singing in the spaces.
It has destroyed its chains from a body that was a prison.

8

You are banished, my friend, and the den rats
Become lairs’ lions feeding on hawks.
If there is no choice but to live in such an evil world,
Take the core and throw all shells away.

9

My friend, leave illusions running like phantoms.
Any illusion you acquire, leaves scars in the mind.
The stars are bewildered and the world is deceiving.
Why then cry the misfortune as you babble in condemnation?

10

your world became a pyramid inverted upside down,
where the top became the bottom and the bottom the top.
If you can’t change it in talk or action,
Why do you let stress assassinate reason?

11

Some of you look in the mirror day and night
and sing: I am Narcissus beautiful and glittering,
I am the god of poetry, charm, ability and invention.
then he writes nonsense, bobble and madness.

12

And he thinks God has inspired him the secret of creation,
That he completed his mind and gave him the brilliance,
Thus all signs of truth were clear to his eye.
Does lizard know that it has lost the way?

13

And he lives as an owl loving the world as dark,
And if the morning’s sun has risen, he escapes aimlessly,
Not knowing whether backwards or forward shall go.
It is the confusion which sweeps vessels and bones.
 

14

Falseness becomes a cloth that the leaders wear,
And if you deny a thing, the pious made from you “unbeliever”
Pious? I am bewildered with my matter and the origin of disaster,
And with Satans that have a thousand ways in canniness.
 

15

She is fifty but the photo is exactly twenty,
And so the Old man presents himself as young,
If man deceives by his photo,
How doesn’t he fabricate a speech from fake?

 

16

History died away between caliphates and kingdoms,
And Blood that drowned everyone, frivolous or in piety,
Will stay appealing for hate and killing.
Why then do we praise and applaud it ?

17


Why was nothing written about Al-Maghut except
after his death?
None gave him enough attention during his life.
So he ended in stubborn loneliness igniting his embers.
Thereafter many tongues were racing to praise his achievements.

18

If someone rejoices from success we agonize,
And if he gets great trouble we complain,
We are two bodies with one head naked and turbaned,
And you see us always thirsty and the glass is full.

19


The Arabs in the old age make from the black a slave,
But The mighty black has destroyed the chain,
He is the dread who can display storm and thunder,
And he is able to put a border for the despot.

 

20

Who is master, you, the extract of illusion?
The remnants of the ancient time in the age of deception.
As your leaders failed you vanished
You won’t get prestige unless you cast off the cloth of arrogance.

 

Written and Translated by:  Bahjat Abbas Ali