1. Did you not ask the ruined abode,
While you were standing by it, confining it,

2. And it was once laughing with me,
How it turned with decay frowning?

3. Why are you desolate amidst it
When you were intimate in it?

4. And because you denied it
With your eyes you kept touching it.

5. Oh, would that when I met it
I had decayed and not seen it decayed,

6. For how many gazelles did I see in it
Wearing the garb of youth and passion!

7. Strolling coquettishly, and how many
In its bowers I do not like sighing!

8. You were watered with abundance for so long
You watered it and made it flourish,

9. And the blowing of the winds
Upon you was like the slumber of youth.

10. And the fangs of time did not make you their prey
For you were a horseman to them for ages.

11. Oh where is the one I used to look to
Sitting lofty in your precinct?

12. And he who was glory to the full moon
With his sole ever trampling it!

13. It entrapped me with its allurements
While I was infatuated with others.

14. And it was the bright morning to my eye
So rise and look at my gloomy night!

15. What young man was there who did not enjoy
In its meadows standing firmly?

16. And the branch of soft breezes was rustling
Then after it became withered!

17. And the shaking of the lances and the plain of lights
Returned to us rigid and suppressed!

18. It left hastily like the light of the lamp
While I was its kindler, kindling it!

19. It was as if my heart had caught fire from it
With me having the blinking eye!

20. How strange that when my beloved came to me
And returned with it humiliated!

21. I went with it to the abode of decay
Openly and I gave it the guide!

22. So they did not dwell a dwelling after it
Nor sniffed after it sneezing

23. Nor called after the order of the departure
In anyone after it anxiously!

24. Peace be upon you, even if I
Despaired of meeting you for ages!

25. And take from my copious tears that
I will always be shedding,

26. And after you was lost one I protected
For long, while you were guarding him!

27. So between me and the misfortunes of time
Are wars I mentioned luckless to it!

28. And were it not for the insanity of its turns
The walker would not have preceded the horseman!

29. Nor would the demolisher of that which I built
And cutter down of its saplings be planting!

30. It made me drink and oh would that it had not
Made me drink bounty, you see me anguished by it!

31. And it made me hear and it deafened my hearing
And it has become roaringly deafened!