1. Death and life are closely intertwined
Time's arrow never misses its mark

2. Time trains those who live through it
Though training cannot temper its sting

3. Time's nature is wise and eloquent
Time is a poet and orator

4. Yet I see you seek longevity and more days
It has for you ruin, torment and decay

5. I've seen you test time, try to uncover its secrets
If reason guided you, you'd abandon this endeavor

6. Time speaks to you in clear Arabic
Yet I see you make no reply

7. If you understood time's words about you
You'd be filled with sadness and tears

8. You clung to youth and its misguidance
But death is coming to you, no matter how much you despise it

9. You gained wisdom but I see no wise man
You sought but I see you attain nothing

10. You dwelt in the valleys of a changing world
That changes and ruins the dwellings of all

11. Can life be sweet with death looming near?
Never! Death and sweetness never combine

12. Flee from decay if you wish, but it pursues
Each child of womankind, and watches closely

13. How could you be fooled by your vanishing days?
When you are smart, how could time deceive you?

14. You tasted life's wine time and again
Testing, examining, trying to understand

15. Death lies in wait to seize all souls
For death we're destined; to dust, our fate

16. If ruin leaps forth, will you not repent?
No! For when will I see you repent?

17. How strange your blaming, quarrelsome ways
Does one full of faults see the faults of others?

18. I'm astonished at my heedlessness and folly
That death calls me tomorrow and I will respond

19. I'm astonished that I thought death so distant
When it creeps up on me, pouncing, prowling

20. My mind still fails and betrays me
Though I see it clearly, a heavy cross to bear

21. Days once caressed me with their softness
When youth's boughs brought sweetest scents

22. Youth is fickle with women
While age finds no love from women