By Dr Shihab Ghanem

Have you really reached eighty?

It looks that it was only yesterday that you were a kid playing

Age what is age? Roles you played

Like an actor in a play

The beginning was having fun without work

When your parents were the two pillars and the role model

And then you became a pupil in a school

Establishing the foundations of knowledge in your mind

Exams were not neglected by you

But your play with your mates continued

And then the universities all over the world

And knowledge like mountains one after the other

Ah! How much you have traveled

And how much have you seen amazing sights

How many jobs and posts have you undertaken

And how many good and rotten people have you known

And the daughter of Eve was there to inspire your poems

And poetry is a refuge for lovers with broken hearts

How much a great love have you cherished

And there is nothing like love to ignite splendor in the heart

It is the fuel that really drives us towards the sublime

It is the vision. It is the hope.

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O old man! The “film” of age has been recorded by the two angels

There is no falsehood in it, or defect.

You have forgotten many details of your deeds

But they recorded the minutest of details.

And the hour of truth will surely come,

So what have you prepared for it, old man?!