1. I see crowds, swarming crowds
Yet they live devoid of reason

2. Time rumbles around them as though
It rumbles around rubble and dust

3. When they heed time, they disown each other
Exchanging thorns and stones

4. Destroying the spirit of brotherhood between them
Ignorantly, living like strangers

5. The ogre of misery and oblivion rejoiced at them
As did the greed of despoilers and usurpers

6. They are playthings moved by greed and frivolity
Petty grudges and deceit

7. And I see souls of stagnant smoke
Dead, like ghosts behind a fog

8. Dead, forgetting life's passion and resolve
Moving like the movement of idols

9. The flame of existence has died down in them
Leaving them like burnt wood

10. No heart dares life, no ambition
Soars like the flight of the intrepid falcon

11. Rather, in the dead dust, in the sorrow of earth
Their feelings grow with the grass

12. And die suppressed like a wretched flower
That grows and withers in the gloom of the forest

13. Forever staring at the dust, not seeing
The light of the sky - their spirit is dust

14. The gifted poet squanders his art
Wastefully, under feet and boards

15. And lives in a barren, dead universe
Built by the blindness of the ages

16. The astute scholar spends his life
Understanding words and studying books

17. He lives on the ruins of the stale past
Like a worm in the embers' soot

18. While the people between them are a lost flock
Their world is one of food and drink

19. Woe to the sensitive in their world
What agony and torment he suffers!