1. The most wretched of creatures is he of high ambitions,
And the unhappiest of beings is the wielder of the pen.

2. Time has bound the sons of this world and restricted them,
While the free-spirited bird is imprisoned from its melodies.

3. His hand has subjected the pens to shed his blood,
So they did not protect him, nor treat him with justice.

4. So woe to him who is in love! Cups of wine have agreed with him,
For lovers are madmen, so do not blame them.

5. Every person of ambition has hope in this world,
And everyone who has hope endures pain.

6. Woe to the nights! For they have burdened me with wakefulness,
Drawing my grief closer than the grief of my rival.

7. My soul did not tell me to break it
Except for fear of regret on my soul.

8. Whenever I say my asceticism drives away my burden,
I return while the passion in it drives away my boredom.

9. Misery, which they call discipline, refuses
That poetry smile except when I shed my blood.

10. I accompanied my youth while aware
My youth has passed, so should I leave my pen?

11. It is as though the grey hairs appearing
On my temples are stars shining in the darkness.

12. Old age laughs at the hair on my head and accuses me -
The grey-haired are suspect to the tender ones.

13. But to me every grey hair is a smiling mouth,
And every grey hair is condemned as suspicious.

14. Say to her who laughed in wonder at my infatuation:
Has there ever been a youth that did not fade?

15. I have become more confused than a specter, more perplexed
Than a guest, and more wakeful than a shepherd guarding his flock,

16. And [I spend] nights depicting constellations,
As if I could grasp shooting stars in my fists.

17. My eyelids do not taste sleep until my hands obtain
What none can win but me, through my dreams.

18. It is not in my nature to dwell on ruins
Or mourn what has passed - that is not my way.

19. But I am stubborn, though my soul forgets not
The queen of the East, with the Nile and pyramids.

20. I spent half my youth with her and feared not
Disgrace for my soul, nor blemish upon it.

21. Among young men like brilliant stars, their faces
Glowing - none but the generous are their ilk.

22. In hardship, they do not close their hands,
Rarely does one with plenty give in times of crisis.

23. It satisfies me, the passion that stirs within me,
Illuminating me with the cold spring rains.

24. Yearning westward, competed with yearning
For the place where verses and wisdom descend.

25. The sun never sets except my tears become its dusk -
Eyes forget the redness of sleep before it.

26. No morning breeze blows toward it
Except I wish I were the breeze.

27. What is the state of those melodies after their lover?
For after them I am sick with anxiety and frailty.

28. The clouds rained heavily upon me while the Nile
Suffices my people without bloodshed.

29. The East is a crown and Egypt is its jewel,
The East an army and Egypt bearing the flag.

30. Alas! The eye of its visitor is not sated
Except by one of etiquette or worthy pedigree.

31. It bows over the freeman like a mother over her child -
So the freeman in Egypt is like the holy in Mecca.

32. I continued while time stretched its hand away from me
Until I stepped away, lost from its soil.

33. I wake to find myself among a people whose eyes
Are kept awake by evil, worse than disease in the bowels.

34. The worth of the noble, educated poet is not great among them -
Rather, like the worth of the lively among the rubble.

35. I showed the ape to be more modest than every boor,
Yet the ape laughs at him, no humility in its gaze.

36. When you look at it, no flaw escapes you -
You see the ugliest of God's creations altogether.

37. Though one of the bedouins - but when I recite to him
The gems of poetry, he tosses them like some foreign gibberish.

38. It stirs him no fervor or joy,
As though I recite them to an idol.

39. No fault in my words, but deafness in him -
Eloquence is mute to one who is deaf.

40. I have withheld my gems from those unworthy of them,
For I am stingy in blessing the ungrateful.

41. I see ignorance in them remain ever youthful
While knowledge seems as aged as decrepitude.