1. To you I send a breath I exhaled
With a heart and chest snow-covered and expansive

2. Do not hasten to blame it, be gentle with its blossom
Perhaps it suggests a meaning more refined

3. Poetry is the finest speech we string together
Though some petty minds miss its piquant salt

4. Now I feel I have reached an age
Of disillusion, as the caravan departs

5. Among them is a friend I heard of
Who came from the West, across the dunes

6. I imagined him a wall holding back Gog and Magog
Plugging my ears - his voice barely audible

7. I appointed him my chamberlain, guarding the door
His muffled voice can scarcely pass through