1. I reproached time, perhaps it would reproach me,
So that our house may reunite us or bring us close,

2. Perhaps a grief in the heart may cease,
Or a burning coal may be extinguished,

3. And I may be rid of the clouds of worries,
As a sharpened sword is unsheathed.

4. So I may ride the steeds of youth for amusement,
With its army marching around me,

5. And I may give the palms of passion the reins,
And follow it wherever it goes,

6. And to me, the church is not for seclusion,
Sprinkled with a monastery the most crowded.

7. It makes its glances the judge over lions,
And meets in it a monk who fears,

8. The Copt lavished upon its like,
And met in it the most dissolving doctrine,

9. With a face that came with the arts of spring,
And showed it the distortion of what turns,

10. With it the roses and myrtles and ponds,
But its nature is a scorpion.

11. As black as the outstretched black,
That stings here and bites there,

12. If their poison spreads in the heart,
Then wear its cold shirt.

13. The breeze of morning waves its branches,
Like a branch playing with the morning breeze,

14. So it pulls that fertile, beautiful one,
Violently, and it has none that it pulls.

15. I wondered at the softness of its belt,
And the delicacy of what it concealed surprised me.