1. Skulls are like balls that swords have bent, wielding blows,
While they remain weapons' scabbards.

2. A man may confine himself away from others
With anguish in heart and soul churning.

3. By my life! Doves have nested in the courtyards
Of nights too narrow for wandering wild animals.

4. I hope for God's pardon, while my chest burns,
Whenever the pangs of death seize me.

5. There the soul wishes its sins were few
And its measure of good great.

6. And forgets a lover's ashes in the sand dunes,
And is saved from the horror of rejection by what it treats.

7. This dust will eat the limbs of one who decays,
While generations inherit what he assembled and collected.

8. And an arrow of fate, precisely striking, fells the youth,
Even if arrows of demise are deflected from him.