Original content

English translation

A preacher on the pulpit recited a poem more tasteless than anything one could utter, and to promote it he said: By God, I composed this in the middle of the prayer! I heard one of those in the assembly say: A poem composed during prayer is this tasteless—what taste, then, could the prayer have had in which this poem was composed!

You said: Last night, during the night prayer, I composed A poem by which the worth of all poems was shattered. Had that poem come down from the lower passage, Thereby your prayer, like your ablution, would have been broken.

A poet recited a ghazal full of flaws, One said to be distinguished by the omission of the letter alif. I said to him: There is no artifice better than this— That you omit from it all the letters entirely.

Yesterday you were reciting, with a boast, an opening couplet: This is no mere matla but a sea of pearls! How fitting is it to call it a single sea (meter), Since every hemistich is a different sea.

If you cannot recite, and cannot write, or when you turn to verse The offspring of your nature falls outside the meter— By these three traits how can one fault you in poetry, Since no such defect ever touched the office of prophethood.