I have a quarrel with my land and age.
No one can tell blessing and advantage
From handicap and wretched tyranny.
What Islam means puzzles even the sage.

No one speaks truth or wisdom any more.
No one distinguishes lies from the law.
No one can tell what's dirty from what's clean.
The line 'twixt fair and foul we now ignore.

Our people have no chuckles and no charms.
The rich no longer grant the poor their alms.
Mothers are shameless and their daughters flirt.
Manners are lost amid all such alarms.

On others' property men keep an eye
Their hearts are full of spite, their ways are sly.
Justice is dead, so murder stalks the street.
Compassion? Love? All that has long gone by.

O Makhtumkuli, does your soul not dwell
Here but a little time? And in that spell
The soul must soar above this tawdry age.
What good or bad is, no one's soul can tell.