1. Time takes revenge on me for a deliberate crime,
For I have killed its children in full knowledge.

2. And though I did not shed their blood,
I came to know their affairs completely and probed them.

3. I went out early while my steed Rihān was a pledge,
Skillful in difficulties, and I am patient.

4. It is as though our souls are unruly camels
Whose intellect controls them while the verse is elucidated.

5. How many hours one longs to build in construction
Yet is not granted what he would build in verse!

6. Like the mother ostrich who comes out of her nest
With chicks of a house that will return to being a grave.

7. Perhaps you will fulfill the dust of my religion
When we rise from the graves covered in dust.

8. And the digger of a mine met with ruin
Though his toil was to obtain sulfur.

9. We agreed upon a despicable disposition.
So why does the ignorant take pride in greatness?

10. For this one asks the misers for attainment
While that one beats the generous out of insolence.

11. A man sitting proudly in a wasteland
Is like his rising in the plateau in the early dawn.

12. And calling you a doctor to mend a limb
Is lighter for you than calling you an undertaker.

13. Neither advanced age nor youth protects the young man
With a death wrapping him in advanced age and youth.

14. We spend our time in wealth and poverty
And expend our words whispering and yelling.

15. I disavow, before the Creator, a tongue
That grew accustomed to frightening people, by God!

16. And he who innovates lengthy poetical pieces in plains
Should not leave the birds behind with the ants.

17. It is as though we are in seas of calamities
And the seers do not perceive a moral for them.