1. O you who call out to an empty house, can it speak?
It has become mute to you, so it cannot speak.

2. As if, when it fell mute, a passionate lover
Among those who reproach him, bows his head.

3. He persisted bowing his head until
He seems blind while he is clear-sighted.

4. I intended towards that one alone
Whose words in my ear I cherish.

5. With his guidance he complains of sleeplessness from
My arrowheads that pierced his chest.

6. What preoccupies them most is a prostration
To the cheek of the sun when it rises.

7. He marries wine to water in
Cups of pure wine whose foam seethes.

8. Statues that do not
Hear the supplicant nor speak.

9. Engraved on the statues of the Banu Babak
Is a trench between them.

10. As if they and the wine above them
Are regiments drowned in a marsh.

11. So this description is no description of an empty house
In whose ruins a fool wanders.