1. Kisra's palace, with its high chambers
Made of teak wood elaborately carved,

2. Saddened me - may God frustrate its lord's aims! -
With a fair lady hardly given to frowns.

3. To allow the waters of the two ponds to stagnate,
Though before they were fresh from every thicket.

4. Emptied of its lodgers and the visiting tribes,
Once it was watered on burning sands.

5. I said to an eye with collyrium, "Do greet them!"
It consented, but did not utter a word.

6. The abode of kings I saw, when in comfort,
The pillar of kingship never tumbled down.

7. By my life! It's now a ruin between dunes and hills
With channels on which the torrents burst all embankments.

8. By every lofty palace and majestic court,
Are desolate waste and a cup free of all froth.

9. Dearer to Hassân, if he could manage it,
Than frolicking girls of Ghifar and Aslam.