1. I see time, its events make its speech redundant,
With advice that healed our minds with its core.

2. It unsheathed a sword amidst the insects of greed,
That swarmed around it while it was above their swarming.

3. It has a heart that guides hearts calmly,
Towards it, and blind to its imminent overturning.

4. It is the lion, except when dozing
It extended its paw, causing the lion to miss the intimacy of its lair.

5. When its victories bring men intimacy,
And when its blades bring them the intimacy of its sharpness.

6. So many thrones it destroyed in its youth,
And so many armies it defeated with its youth.

7. And so many nations that did not give thanks for its sweetness,
So God unleashed upon them the whip of torment.

8. And I testify that the sweetness of its honey,
Was not safe for one who obtained bitterness from its bees.

9. A destroyer, destructive are its ways, yet
Its consequences are sealed with punishment.

10. Do you not see the one who ruled kingdoms,
While kings of earth walked under his feet?

11. The world surrendered to him and almost deified him,
If not for the fading of its shooting star.

12. Did help not come to him like coming of his pigeons?
And the unexpected befell him, beyond his calculations?

13. He did not fear helpers nor intelligence,
He was not wary of his guards or his veil.

14. The next morning his fortress and fortresses betrayed him,
Due to his own gain through his endeavors.

15. No silver saved him when he declined,
No gold saved him when he went away.

16. The left of fate reconciled his reunion,
While the right of separation returned intimacy to his side.

17. He was wrapped, displaced, in the grave, bereaved,
Alone until the day of doom that will come to him.

18. His translation to nothingness translates his expiration,
How lonesome became his plains and horizon!

19. Go easy over the grave’s greenness with his remains,
And ask it about what youth did with its youth.

20. In its silence under surfaces, there is a gesture,
That answers what would suffice the young man to answer.

21. His relatives divided his inheritance,
And his peers isolated him in his grave’s soil.

22. Stranger than my fate, is the amazement of the temporal,
By your life, the wonders of its wonders!

23. And for how long will I blame it, and it only increases
The harm of one who increases blame towards it?

24. If I do not fear the roar of its predators,
Then I must fancy the barking of its dogs.

25. He harbors enmity towards me, he whose testimony
Against me is nothing but my hatred of his hostilities.

26. If he backbites me, thank him on my behalf, for he only
Admonishes the likes of me with his backbiting.

27. And he doubts the superior merits that immersed the world,
And I can reveal, if I wished, his doubts.

28. He prophesies ill for my poetry if I refine his ignorance,
For I have exonerated it from ignorance.