You’re a miser, God, coveting what you give.
You lend us beauty, but never long to live.
Within your world we know death everywhere.
but meet it as a stranger unaware.
The lovely flower that September saw
in hardly anytime at all is straw.
For beauty like hers I would search in vain,
You could not fashion her so well again.
I don’t mean to call your cunning dull:

You could make more, but not this miracle.
What would you gain to see me lost in night?
Spare me what you cannot copy quite.
Should there be new fairer ones you design,
give them to others. I would not part with mine.
The grace you put in her is so her own,
could you not bless and leave my love alone?

(Translated from Amharic into English by Gaitachew Bekele. Orginally published in Mexcio Quarterly Review Volume 3, 1969.)