Abu Abdullah Al‑Shawi
What I wrote in elegy of the martyr Abdul Zahra Uthman Mohammed (Izz al‑Din Salim) – may God have mercy on him – on his anniversary
In the northernmost reaches of the South, rain fell,
and minds ripened upon a place of meaning.
A voice stood against the echo –
in its thought a hymn,
above the Mushafs it has never ceased.
The lightning of its meteor snatched generations,
until the flood of knowledge became a guide.
History caught the spark of his flint,
and pens raced to tell of a hero.
In the journey of Fatima bint Mohammed,
attainment was hard, yet he was the first to reach.
It was a launch like a meteor when, from an empty seat above the sky, he descended.
The throne of the tyrants shook at his awareness –
no split, upon it the crown stood straight.
O string upon which truth is a virtue –
how could your censure in God diminish you?
If they had given you time, would your death have been a right?
Was death in you truly in haste?
We said we took light from you, then you went out –
and they kindled a fire for the tyrants’ rule at the beginning.
O you who glorified the faith with soaring thought –
yearned for by all seasons and creeds.
A breeze in the marshland, they named its root
a Da‘wa to al‑Sadr in the great matter.
Forgive us, Abu Yassin – not a person we know,
nor one among the lines that guide.
Nor his remains in obscurity –
what worth is explanation for the blindfolded?
The sun knows when its light goes,
yet even in darkness it blazed.
Sixty‑six [books] that I read –
in the thought of Izz al‑Din they pray.
His system was the state of the human being –
they killed him so that no failure might be measured against them.
They did not precede him by a step in his march –
can they precede his death‑rattles when the appointed time comes?
عزالدين سلِم