I see decay and death in middle youth,
Remembering the shroud by each gray strand.
My heart is restless now, without an aim,
Because this is not what I once had planned.
I cannot speak the tongue I want to speak,
And cannot find a soul who'll understand.
The qita or qitah (fragment) has a rhyme scheme of: xa - xa, varying between 2 or 15 couplets (longer ones do also exist). It was and is populair in West Asian and Middle Eastern literture. Its western equivalent is the epigram.
