The Cholera

 

In the stillness of the night,

Listen to the echo of moaning,

In the depth of darkness, beneath the silence, for the dead.

Cries that rise, terrified,

A sorrow that flows, inflamed,

In which the echoing cries of pain stumble.

There’s tumult in every heart, 

Sorrows in the quiet cottage.

Everywhere there’s a soul screaming the dark, 

The sound of sobbing.

This is what has been ripped apart by death.

Death, death, death.

O Nile, wailing over what death has wrought.

The dawn has broken;

Listen to the footsteps of passersby,

In the silence of the dawn, hark, behold the procession of the mourners.

Ten dead, twenty,

Don’t count, just listen to the mourners,

Listen to the voice of the poor child.

Dead, dead, the count has been lost,

Dead, Dead, there’s no tomorrow.

Everywhere there’s a body mourned by the bereaved,

Not a moment of quiet, no silence.

This is what the hand of death has done.

Death, death, death. 

Humanity bemoans what death has wrought.

The Cholera,

In the cave of terror, with human remains, 

In the eternal silence where death is remedy, The Cholera epidemic has risen,

Hatred rampaging viciously.

It descended upon the merry, luminous valley,

Screaming madly, feverishly, 

Deaf to the sound of mourning,

Everywhere its paws leaving echoes behind,

In the cottage of the peasant woman, in the home,

Nothing but the cries of death.

Death, death, death.

In the cruel figure of the Cholera, death wreaks vengeance. 

Such bitter silence,

Nothing but the echo of the call to prayer.

   Even the gravedigger has died, and no one is left to help. 

  The muazzin of the mosque is dead,

  Who will pray for the dead,

  Nothing is left save crying and sighs.

The child who has lost mother and father, cries with a burning heart.

 Tomorrow no doubt the vicious disease will snatch him. 

O specter of the Cholera what have you spared, Nothing but the sorrows of death.

 

O Egypt, my feeling has been ripped apart by what death has wrought