1. My heart is content with melodies and music,
With wealth and goods and enjoyment,

2. With wine and drinking companions that stir excitement,
With ambition aspiring for high rank,

3. With gatherings guarded from suspicion,
Filled with all knowledge sought,

4. Their passionate talk nearly catching fire,
Poetry, tales, grammar tersely composed,

5. And language uniting the words of Arabs,
And poverty, like a promise in a lover's heart,

6. Or sustenance unbidden, from none sought,
Yes, and my heart is content with what is culled

7. From poetic compositions in silver and gold,
Inkpots adorned with ink dark and still,

8. Their ears perforated, and in each hole
Like pearls of white Arabian shells,

9. Containing a drop in which is grass for books,
Black, flowing with meanings like shooting stars,

10. Wisdom never runs dry unless it is dry,
Tied to my left hand for a reason

11. Like an earring hanging from the neck perturbed,
Accompanied by sisters likewise disturbed,

12. A case depositing nobility from reed
Which no feather gave it, no heel shapes its end,

13. The pages laugh not until they are rumpled,
I hurl them to my right, the books' targets,

14. A hurling which, if I aim straight, hits the mark,
And a pen case like a viper if touched by a staff

15. Angers at pens without cause,
Rising against them at all times and leaping,

16. Yet you only please it in that anger,
So those are my instruments, and my instruments I love,

17. And refinement in instruments is a thing to be sought,
Especially what is of them for literature.