Thirty-five years old! Half the journey gone.
Like Dante, we stand midway through life.
The vigor of our youth —
in vain today we beg it, in vain we call —
departs without a thought for our tears.

Has snow fallen upon my temples? What else could this be?
Is this wrinkled face really mine, my God?
And these violet shadows beneath my eyes?
Why do you now seem like enemies,
you mirrors I had counted as friends for so many years?

How greatly a person changes with time!
Whichever photograph I look at, that is not me.
Where have those days gone, that passion, that excitement?
I am not that man with the smiling face.
My carelessness was an illusion, and so was the smile.

Our first love has grown dim,
even its memory now seems strange.
One by one our paths have parted
from the friends with whom we set out into life;
and as the years pass, our loneliness grows.

Even the sky has another color!
It took me long to learn that stone is hard,
that water drowns and fire burns.
Every new day brings another sorrow —
and only on reaching this age does a person understand.

Yellow quince, red pomegranate — autumn!
Each year I feel it a little more deeply within me.
Why are the birds circling high in the sky?
Where did this funeral come from? Who has died?
How many ruined gardens have I seen by now?

Whoever you may be, death waits above us all.
One day you will fall asleep and never wake.
Who knows where, how, or at what age?
And upon the stone of the funeral prayer, as upon a throne,
for the length of a single prayer, your kingdom will remain.