Poems

Life of which the sleeping mat is effort/problems
Know! Every afternoon/day is a collision/difficult situation
The one ignorant of the decision he has made
Doesn't know the house it will open
Doesn't know what shock will come after it.
In life [the] gullet [i.e. greed] takes [the] beard [i.e. leads]
Huh! Greed moves on it [i.e. life] [as in: it drives it]
And then the grudge/blame and its trouble
The mistake and shame and its badness
Know! Understanding is haltered to them.
And the small spear does not miss its target of death
A shield to fend it off doesn't prevent it
It doesn't screen off [the effect of] the girl's eye
No person is permanent in the daylight [i.e. no one lasts forever]
Of what I am certain, number one is death.
Since I crawled
Until the day I have a beard
News which is a trek [i.e. news which is around me] and which disturbs me
Things carrying information
How much my ear has received [in the form of a rhetorical question]
As I lamented a brave young man who was lacking [lit: who one lacked]
How I groaned with sadness
The young ones/children who were lacking milk to me [i.e. who had nothing]
For whose sake my eyes [lit. eyeballs] became weak
When I looked for their grudge [i.e. the ones who are to blame for their problems]
[The] unhealed scab and grief
Did I become angry from recalling [these things]!
A booming sea and the inlet of the coast
Did I threaten it and accuse it!
Did I begin my case!
 
In the next section, the poet addresses the sea which causes the death of many people emigrating over it.
 
If you, oh sea, could not prevent my vulnerable ones [children, women, old people] from being slaughtered
That you threaten my protected ones in that way is not right [i.e. a lawful thing]
By God you have become worthless
Obligation you owe me which is a debt
Admit it [legally] don't stand stiff [as if you've done nothing]
May God take you to the fires [of hell]
It is you who has killed my black-bearded ones [younger men], the women and good women in an isolated place
Be empty and run dry by the end of the day
May the waters dry up drop by drop
Become a flat open ground
A land the nomadic trek passes over in the late afternoon
As she [the sea] roared and rumbled
The waves and the foam beat
 
In the following lines the sea replies to the poet's accusations.
 
She [the sea] said: 'Your poem
Is an offense and news to me
I don't deserve the blame you have put on me
The condemnation you launch
Have I deserved it?  Just be careful.
As your land is weak
If your leadership [lit: the people who go out to reconnoitre] is lacking
If your patience moves away
And your expectations diminish
Despair which overcomes you
Wise one[s] slacking are asleep
Doesn't the trek lead you in front of the season of death
The girls who travelled at night and emigrated over the sea
A wave which crept up on them killed them
A tree which would have supported them was lacking
When a loved one failed to prevent it
Did the roaming wild creatures in the wilderness eat them?
As the desert isolated them
A good hero who would be dependable
How many were abused in jail
Maidens who were all Quraysh [i.e. beautiful and innocent]
How many prime youths reached adulthood
Birds of prey cawed over his corpse
The offspring the Victorious One [i.e. God] gave you
What did the wild animals become satiated on?
When the boat overturned
When the young ones where scattered about
? Did the fish shed streams of tears at the shock
The one[s] who over the whole area of the coast
Scattered our dead
Do you fail to recognize [it/them]; just be careful.
The extermination which sea migration brings
Destruction and ugly death
The mothers who have cut the mourning cloth
This incident which looks on you all the time [i.e. keeps happening to you]
[Surely] some thing must be learned from it
Haven't you [pl.] grown old [enough to realize]
The gu' [rains] which have fallen and been heavy
The gudgude rain which has come in the late afternoon
When the galaw bustard and the jugley bustard
Call in the paths among the bush
Doesn't knowledge/understanding teach
To tighten the mats on the camel's back
Camels and your cattle with horns
The place where ticks and wild animals are many
?? A place which repeatedly has repeatedly made the back teeth empty
Doesn't knowledge/understanding teach
That you move from it at dawn?
As you have sold your house
If you lack your young children
As you are at the end
If you receive the bad news
Give pounds [i.e. money] for the time of your death
If you are neighbours with death
If your wealth buys
That which humanity shuns
Then it is what you deserve
Why should you arouse lamentation from it [this]?
 
In the next passage, the poet replies to the sea.
 
I admit, I've overdone it
I have said receive it and take my apology
Good fortune would not have left
The young ones would not have died
They would not have thrown themselves at the ocean
The one you passed them to has not accepted responsibility [i.e. the leadership has not taken responsibility for them]
He didn't learn a solution with a future
He didn't fulfil [the] duty you were expecting [of him]
He didn't lead [them] to where you aimed for
On the journey and the trek
He slept instead of warning
? That so many days he would have warned
The threat your life is surrounded by
These young ones whose number is getting small
The aspirations have been take away from them all
Colonial book[s] said you wouldn't reach it
There where humanity is moving towards
A veil has been put over the hope [hope is hidden by a veil]
One has been isolated from the truth [/reality]
'You're worthless' has overwhelmed him/them
A channel has been cut with a strong wind with rain [an expression of being overwhelmed]
[And] has withered the confidence.
You are a person who creates success
You are a person who prepares ground for a house [i.e. builds a house]
You are a person in your own right
Leave being hungry for it and bring yourself [to existence]
Your peers [i.e. people in other countries] are not greater than you by even a little bit
Your knowledge is not short
Your future has not been stemmed [the word for this comes from when the camel's milk is stemmed]
Your people have not forsaken you
You are not cut off from this country of yours
Western Europe has not called you
The Greeks don't need you
You are noble ?who doesn't know that
Here is your land
Look at what is in front of you (? gabargaal)
Consider your sides (?what is below you)
Enamel [i.e. polish, or something like that] your time to come
Children are clustered around you
Who sleep by the walls in the cold
Who are turning to your wisdom
Incompleteness is all around you
Before you that which no one has fulfilled
Responsibility that is set upon you
Is greater than that you break loose and move away.