1. Illness, yet an illness without pain,
Grayness pained despite my eyes with blame,

2. When it's said grayness is a guest, I shall not
Meet it, by God, except with a smiling face.

3. It increased my esteem and dignity's height,
For the light is in knowledge or in the fire's might.

4. She smiled in the darkness of poetry rising,
Like the smile of a pearl star in the gloom.

5. If you seek life when youth has passed, for whom?
Or deny sadness when passion is lost, for who?

6. Who taught the pen flowing in its motions?
I said: who taught man with the pen?

7. Grayness revealed only the color in my old age,
Like the color of my grayness, but I'm not wise yet.

8. For a nation whose pledge fate hasn't kept,
Can fate be known by those it has shortchanged?

9. Lead me to death, o fate, for when
Can one avoid the unavoidable end?

10. Of what I tell you, as life is ever-changing,
That I will die, counted among the fragile.

11. In the days of my youth, which I don't
Deceive myself about, unlike today in my old age.

12. A spark lit up in the night of my ambition,
So fate faced from me a reverent face.

13. For when the soul of a youth is tested
Through its humiliation, that is a kind of nonexistence.

14. It grays a soul when its locks turn white,
And reverting to youth is a kind of disgrace.

15. It attained its wishes, then fate called me:
You've made your matter crooked, so go straight!

16. The lines of ashes remain in graves, so I saw
The flare of this fire in the coals.

17. And a blackness and whiteness in my heart, I said:
A filthiness of worry or of determination?

18. I refrained from wearing my fineries with its wear,
And death does not pardon prey in the sacred place.