1. You only visited to deceive, O fleeting one,
Then you vanished before my wishes were fulfilled.

2. How can one who was a morning and nearby visitor
Visit those in darkness, away from the frequented paths?

3. It is futile for one who sacrificed with a blade
To sleep between gardens and rivers.

4. Old age with its hardships visited me at dawn before you,
Yet I did not become frail between my visitors.

5. I used to excuse myself before his visit,
But now pleasures have become too constricted for my excuses.

6. Radiant stars unmoved by rain,
Luminous stars giving no light to the fading twinkler.

7. No welcome to a whiteness that was not brilliant
At the morn’s flush or did not shine for the lamplighters.

8. After my buildings reached glory,
My traces and tales roamed the land.

9. And I attained what every ambitious person was denied,
Unconditionally, while every tyrant despaired of it.

10. The horizon of Gemini trampled me arrogantly,
Destroying my superiority, my perils and my concerns.

11. He aspires to rival me, though joining me is remote,
A greediness from one with faltering steps and scattered traces.

12. Meanness distracted him from blaming me and prevented him
From the strikes of my fangs and claws.

13. You tied up my water springs but found in them
Nothing but crosses, without murmuring waters.

14. You did not take on burdens I took on,
Nor encompassed my edges and far reaches.

15. You did not fight when the strikes of war were underway
Among regiments swift as the darkness of night.

16. May God not distance people who passed on before,
Who supported my prophecies through the ages.

17. My shining suns in the darkness,
My lights and moons in the lamps.

18. A people, when they quickly descended on a house,
Were like the blind descending on a home.

19. And if I rallied them on a battle day,
They came without delaying with excuses.

20. They fear only the blame of a critic,
And dread only the side of disgrace.

21. As if they were born in war and suckled
On the swords’ dripping blood.

22. They know money only when it dams a breach
Or enriches poverty.

23. Their palms are calloused from striking with the sword,
While their manners are gentle waters flowing by them.

24. How often have I achieved a lofty goal through them,
And how often have I checked a hostile tribe!

25. How often I have dragged my rights after they were debased
By the vile, vicious, perfidious beast.

26. Who live in prosperity and luxury,
And in ease or hardship.

27. They fell, but my sorrow for them did not fall.
They parted from me, but they did not depart from my thoughts.

28. I spurned them, so my hand after them was emptied
Of the precious, while my heart was emptied of passions.

29. They did not lack, after attaining perfection
Above all creation, except for length of life.

30. And we passed by an abode after them that was humbled,
Though once lofty, now weakened by time.