1. She blamed me, though I did not deserve blame,
Saying: Old age is but the senility of one gone astray.

2. When she saw me, she feigned a specious excuse―
Dazzling smile and clear complexion.

3. After the passing of passionate youth
Would that death and fate were a lethal poison!

4. Praise God for the singing girls’ art,
Who revived me from my pining sickness

5. Lest my self-respect should lack the refinement
That trails the glory of exuberant youth,

6. After stubbornness that knows no end
In backbiting and chaotic events,

7. With truth and falsehood and bewilderment.
Days grant me what I wish for in death

8. And I take pleasure in the delights of a gone youth,
Under the shade of blissful bowers,

9. Unruffled by the trains of ominous events,
Nor shaken by the onslaught of hardships.

10. But today my decline has caused me decline,
And the first wisdom, untainted by folly;

11. Judicious speech, not foolish talk;
And credible words, not drunkard's babble

12. Set up a memorial for the dear departed days
I had known aforetime in every halting-place

13. Defending me from the harm of every curmudgeon
Among aggressors and troublesome enemies

14. And the guile of a persistent foe and litigant
Who intends to lead astray into error’s labyrinth.

15. I stirred up a commotion and he recoiled like a serpent
In the thickets of the disappointed and distraught.

16. Had I tapped at his door, he would not have answered
And the ambitious dreams of the affected fool!

17. I drove him off with pelting stones and cudgels
Or he feared the bolt of the stern-faced fates

18. And the blows of my hands that never miss their mark.
He gaped wide, spreading slander,

19. From the spites of a snarling, splay-nosed lout,
Coming without rebuke or altercation

20. And without the barking of a clamorous barker,
A good-for-nothing vile to gentle souls

21. By the stench of a bubbly-drink mixing scoundrel,
Poised to steal from the twittering wastrels,

22. After the weaning of the coddled weaklings,
Mumbling crazily without coherence,

23. And babbling whose extremities end in babble,
Blind to guidance in the throng of the blind,

24. With whom the disagreeing faces concurred,
Whenever the erratic winds blow you about,

25. Tossed by the pelting of smooth-rubbed pebbles
On a waterless, parched piece of land

26. Whose brushwood is twisted from drought.
He faces his likes with their likes,

27. On him the quivering of the shifting mirage,
Delighted by the meadows of his grazing land.

28. Addiction walks him along like a driving-beast
By it the curves of all inclinations are ironed out.

29. By us the cawing of the cheating peddlers
Who pull him with sale items and fraud.

30. How often he bellows at night to the echo of an arousal
At the keening of the caterwauling she-mourners,

31. Rivalling the sand-dunes checkered with valleys
By it the motes of the dusty motes are confounded

32. From it the trembling of the shuddering highlights
That flee before the nearing of the horror

33. In the gloom of that distant, godforsaken wasteland.