1. O ancient edifice whose vestments of elegance have crumbled
Its current state bears witness to its antiquity

2. How many nobles and lords have circled around you
While you remained imprisoned by time without decay

3. And how the Romans congregated within you
Yet to them you were like a poisonous sting

4. It was their abode and their command
And their legacy in the land was like a flag on a banner

5. Until the vicissitudes of fate made them disappear
So where are their remnants among the debris?

6. O resembling a bow except that its arrows
Vanquished those nations who sought to possess it

7. They said it is a dilapidated playground, so I told them
Yes, but for the steeds of wind and Eternity

8. O temple, its façade tells
That it is but a speck in the oceans of ambitions

9. Oh how I wish I knew what became
Of its people, their limbs scattered as meat on bone

10. When I recalled its people to it, they shunned me
And conversed with me in speech without mouths

11. And they turned away, left me behind them
Entrusting me to virtuously guard their possessions

12. So I tore my fences in sorrow
And my rocky teeth are broken by regret

13. Shall I tend to their covenant faithfully
Is not my tending of that covenant but generosity?

14. So the hearing has preserved a pendant
From their conversation, O you who saw the incomprehensible elucidate the cryptic