1. You have opened prose with your poetry
Yet you did not account for it

2. You sent it with love as its source
So we saw in it wondrous wonders

3. We saw satire mixed with reproach
You did not know satire or reproach

4. So we addressed you kindly and said
Perhaps it is a mistake; hopefully he will repent

5. When you - with your wicked soul
Lead you arrogantly to be struck

6. Had it tempted your brother before
He would have feared the flaming angels

7. You sent skinny sheep
Whose leanness wards off the wolves

8. Weakness almost hides them; had it not
Seeped through, we'd have deemed them flies

9. Had they flown, we'd have counted them insects
Had they glistened, we'd have deemed them mirage

10. Had they bleated, it'd have been yelping
That even dogs evade responding to

11. Had they been weighed, they'd be like vapor
Had they been poured, they wouldn't quench thirst

12. Had they been tossed in garbage, they'd repel
The soiled crows from the rotten corpse

13. You try to insult me, so why
Didn't you unload your ugliness with curses?

14. You have a match in foolishness
The like of you will not be feared

15. You have work in those flirts
For you have surpassed the lawful age

16. In those vulgarities, how many scandals
You discuss with your peers

17. You say, turning away: "O camel walk on"
While you, when speaking, have no answer

18. Neigh to the villages, O Ghassanid!
And say: "Would that I were dust"!

19. Qawaf of Hizbon like Um 'Amr
You took them and no return of that taking

20. Know, O Shu'ayr, how to satirize
And leave off vermin, for the head is youthful

21. And take it from a learned, powerful one
Even if it is punishment upon the offender

22. How many disjointed meters have you fixed
And how many crumbled verses rebuilt?

23. Its meters were all the same to you before my knowledge
For you to dive in a deep, stormy sea

24. You don't know the difference between light and heavy
Or reward and requital

25. You weren't a historian of poetry
Or smelled the shifts of encampment

26. Beware repeating it to an expert
Beware when the wallet empties out to you

27. Yet I have from it examples, however
I've drawn a veil over your deficiencies

28. My peer mentor feels sorry
Seeing the pupil disgraced and blameworthy

29. I came challenging you hastily
And did not heed the elder's offenses

30. So I saw the thunderbolts mixed
With its pouring rain, and met torment

31. Had I stood firmly for righteousness, I'd have said "Forgive
One like me; did Iblis ever repent?"

32. So for as long as I stretched my neck to attack
How many were the necks my poetry severed

33. It was authenticated among people: "My mouth's trouble
Has passed", so say, quoting: "Rightness has inclined"

34. Whenever Tamim's clan grew angry with me
I saw all people growing angry