1. I dreamed of a world that would not fade away
The delights of my dreams, if only I had a future

2. I thought my singing to people had magic
Is there in the world an ear when I rise up to sing?

3. And I awoke terrified to the evil of an anxious feeling
As if I were a soul in a discarded body

4. I awake from the noble dream to visions
Like nightmares in their wakefulness running amok

5. I read on it letters etched by misery
Two of them terrify you: life imprisonment

6. So I wandered in a lifetime of gloom and taverns
Where drunks babble and bells ring and foam swells

7. And for the precious intoxication there is a stir and froth
As if the world were a moaning swamp

8. And I sheathed my gaze in the darkness of gloom
And for each of my eyelids from grief a coolness

9. Then I saw plates a hand was baptizing
Fingers of bone which a hand was dyeing

10. And in the plates I saw the corruption of the world
Worms drunk with it wander babbling

11. Filth walking through life happily
Singing while the echoes of graves repeat

12. They are people in the world mummified nonsense
I cried over them in my hell and they blamed me

13. And this world whose ashes the wind of oblivion scatters
Is for the wind of death but a smoldering hell

14. In which fires are extinguished leaving no remains
For which a craving for clay in the hearth glows

15. So in a plate of swamp in its cold
Slept corrupt insects burning with desire

16. Women whose breasts lacked suckling
Over their rosy mouths for sin a conduit

17. Harlots who wasted their youth in vice
So their spirit is but an old woman warming herself

18. Their sucklings are bloated frogs
In the fire of their desire they are scorched

19. Farewell, virgins, love in the tents of passion
Your beauty is forbidden and your Eden locked

20. I lost you even in the songs of my floweriness
And my poetry for you had what flowed

21. Do close paradise to a poet
Who gathers the locusts of hell and sings

22. If the fire of hatred blazes in his eye
In his heart for love the light burns

23. He feels the solitudes of life in his soul
And sees only a threatening hell

24. As the poplar stands firm in the storm of gloom
And for the horizon a face descending clouds is cold

25. And for the wind in the forests a cry as if
It were the echo of jinn in the valley of hell singing

26. So remains steadfast in the gloom of the soul
A beauty which in the dome of the soul lies still

27. And in a plate a valley whose water is turbid
No grass grows there and no branch buds

28. And in its folds the spirits do not hear
A partridge singing or a lark trilling

29. There you see rats who see light as a curse
So they prefer the trees of darkness and go dark

30. Kings who buy souls to go to heaven
And their extended conscience is subdued

31. The scripture of heavens lies open on their mouths
And in their spirits a naked sword of hell

32. If a believer meets them he is profane
And if he clashes with their shackles he is an atheist

33. And there are bats born in a sanctum
So if a master is absent in it a master appears

34. Sultans whose thrones are surrounded by whips
And their leader is the brave of thugs

35. You see among them the rebel vomiting his marrow
A dye on the Chosroes’ throne from prostrating

36. And there are locusts thirsty destroyers
Whose wings’ blaze denies them

37. Adorned with turbans, distressed faces,
Coffins colored with tar and bitumen

38. In the mansions of the sky their aspirations
With no guiding reins in the path of the air

39. In it the scabby of face and sky recline
Not for the ants an elevator

40. Petty tyrants of ugly traits forged
As rubies on their crowns and emeralds

41. Madmen who draw perdition from their imagination
Upon whom from the offspring of monkeys a burden is placed

42. Born in paradise they have wasted their souls
So nothing pure in their conscience remains engendered

43. Your excuse is the light of paradise, pure one
And your crooning in the expanse of the sky erected

44. And in your eyes a pure fire burns
In its sanctuary the phantom of the sky embodied

45. And your temple anointed with purified oil
And with healing balm your love bandaged

46. I saw you walking in the brothels a poet
And your crown broken upon you crumpled

47. And your soul tormented and your light faded
And your poetry in base chains fettered

48. And I saw the phantoms of the sky sadly
Upon you with the whips of demons driven away

49. So why did you deviate the soul from the path of its holiness
And it became a lowly cave though it was a temple?