1. The frailty crept through my mortal body,
And I ran hastily behind my bier and shroud,

2. I passed my life stumbling over
The rubble of my hopes and shadows of my sorrows,

3. And I built palaces of illusion and complained
When the hand of time ruined my structure,

4. So every day I have a new life,
And every day the intoxication of death covers me,

5. And were it not for the mist of doubt, O worm of the earth,
I would have found my faith in your creeping,

6. So I let my thoughts spread their arrogance,
And I let my sorrows shroud my sorrows,

7. And I crawl through my life ignorant like you,
Oblivious to the motives of my passion or the causes of my conscience,

8. And resigned in every matter and state
To the wisdom of my Lord, not to the rulings of man,

9. So here you are, blind yet guided by the seeing,
While I walk seeing among the paths of the blind,

10. For you, the earth is a cradle and the sky a canopy,
While for me, because of the confinement of my thoughts, they are two prisons,

11. And if they are straitened for me, it is not for my needs,
But for my ignorance and my pretense of knowledge,

12. So inside me are two opposites: a submissive heart,
And a stubborn mind, harsh in questioning,

13. Imagining that the universe is a secret, and that
It is attained through research or made accessible through proof,

14. So it wandered the earth, air and sky,
Asking about a storyteller, searching for a neighbor,

15. And I was a complete poem before that,
So it shook my meanings and meters that were in me,

16. While you, whom everyone underestimates
And some consider an increase or decrease,

17. You creep freely in the bosom of life,
No worry distresses you about the secrets of the universe,

18. So do not ask the earth who spread its expanse,
Nor the sun who filled it with fire,

19. Nor the wind about a purpose for its blowing,
Nor the red rose about its bloody color,

20. And in the eyes of life you are not despicable,
And no smaller in worth than eagles or hawks,

21. For it does not consider clay more precious than pebbles,
Or diamond finer than rocks from mountain ridges,

22. Did it ever replace a raven with a nightingale,
Or neglect a worm to frolic with gazelles?

23. Did it ever make a sun to burn weeds,
And fill the surface of the earth with chaff and straw?

24. By your life, my sister, our lives contain
No ranks of worth or differences in prices,

25. Its aspects in the universe seem to the beholder
Of numerous forms and varied colors,

26. While its essence remains one since the beginning,
Manifest in comets or manifest in worms,

27. And the one who probes its secrets - its unfolding -
Is only a buyer trying the burning thirst of water sellers,