1. Poetry is like a gallant knight of old
Whose day in the ancient times bore witness

2. And words are a scabbard for their meaning—how strange
That the blade should cut though sheathed inside it

3. And poetry in its words is like water held back
Sweet to hear, it pours forth when released

4. And poetry grows the more original it is
Poetry should not be mere imitation

5. And poetry cries out for ages after its sayer
Poetry gives the refined soul immortality

6. And the poet of love, with his heavy burdens
How long has he borne the litters of affection!

7. O meadow of poetry, I can turn nowhere from you
As long as your vines and trees sing within you

8. And regain my reason to tell me
That poetry is but a fantasy containing exile

9. I have censured my lifetime for the exhaustion it brought
And said, “No existent is safe from your harm.”

10. Death is the sharpest weapon in your hand, and how many
Breastplates and coats of mail has it pierced!

11. So it said to me, “Do not blame me without knowing me,
For I operate by immutable laws.

12. My allotment is inability to help or harm,
For the keys are held by Another, not me.”

13. Fate did not lie defending itself from blame
Until some fool should refute and dispraise it.

14. Do not panic if a crisis comes about;
You alone are not the intended target.

15. Nature refuses but to bend to her will
While you prefer whatever traditions dictate.

16. So choose for your head a block to strike it
And do not say the dead form words!

17. You blamed people their worldly lives, to make them ascetics,
Yet you are terrified when Death’s name is uttered.

18. You dread havoc, uneasy with each new event,
And you are promised Heaven’s vines and singing maidens.

19. You quote words, relate them, following pedantically,
Yet when asked their proofs, no chain of authority.

20. Say to him whose days of glory have departed:
“Do not despair; Fate brings decline and recovery.”

21. People live on hopes that revive them
While you in despair are steeped and saturated.

22. No rider overtakes the startled deer he startles
From underneath him; their innards are the kindling flames.

23. Our rocks do not tell of their cannon fire
Either! Nor do we have the knowledge or resources.

24. No generation surpasses its own civilization
If the yoke of ignorance binds it with tradition.

25. I wished that Death might spare me
Or I might be born long after it.

26. That existence which encompassed space entire
Is from the infinite expanded and stretched out.

27. I laughed and my mouth was filled with laughter.
Who said the universe could be bounded?

28. The heavens tell of an eye that cannot penetrate—
A meadow as if the Pleiades were its fruit.

29. But those who possess knowledge of its encompassment—
For them, all that is said returns to naught.

30. Is this earth, amid numberless suns,
Anything but a stone round which are reptiles?

31. Upon it are broad tracts stretching
Where the stars are clusters of clusters.