1. For whom is a ruined abode with no furnishings
Except traces whose marks time cannot erase?

2. Like doves paired there for the night,
Strangers at dusk with no place to alight.

3. The abodes whose fruits you could pluck
Would taste sweet, while to touch them stings.

4. Nor did sickness make plain my pallor—
My face too is still out of sight.

5. A shelter for winds amid its rooms
Are languages obscure and lucid.

6. I pelted the frolickers till they unveiled
Glances from eyes and hearts took cover.

7. He who swore by the winds, I told him “Farewell!”—
On the likes of those oaths one cannot rely.

8. It encompassed ruins which death had laid waste;
It knew in its lowness both eras and days.

9. An inheritance of some people from others,
Inherited in turn by descendants from sons.

10. Those who passed knew of it ardent zeal,
Now angry, now still, in its disposition.

11. Above it lines as though in Farsi
That even if time is prolonged, can be seen.

12. By narcissi newly plucked, their eyes seem,
When we bestow on them our eyes, eyes.

13. In their forms a variance—yellowness
In place of black, and the white, lids.

14. When he saw my attributes, he looked hard and longed for me.
I said, “A bosom friend is rare then common.”

15. He verified my opinion—God verify his—
When he assumes good while assumptions can err.