1. O Lord, forgive an old and weak man
Whom the vicissitudes of fate have worn down

2. Have mercy on a poor, lonely, devout man
Whom misfortune has kept from livelihood and craft

3. If not for misfortune, I would not seek my living
Except by wielding the sword and the lance

4. I've reached seventy without a single day
That gladdens my heart with gifts

5. When sick, my nurses are flies
The children of Persia, accustomed to harm and roughness

6. I and a group of them have a nature
That grows from every tester toward weakness

7. Yet my people and kinsmen are knowledgeable
Worlds apart from the sincere and the fraudulent

8. They are vagabonds, though they have turned
From weapons to news and plucking

9. Wanderers perplexed in their livelihood
The poor man gets no share of the world

10. People seek coolness in tents, in plenty
While we seek coolness in waste, like a target

11. They drink iced water and snowmelt in comfort
When thirsty, while we drink drainage like dogs from an unclean vessel

12. If we live in houses, they are abandoned
Or mosques or the darkness of a room

13. People in the world are like a gathering
Shaded by a palm tree with abundant fronds

14. It casts down fruit to them from its clusters
While we are pelted with gravel and rubbish

15. When I eat my scraps on ashes
Dates and water, I have reached decadence

16. So praise God, whose sustenance in small amounts
Equals the birds' contentment with the easiest fodder

17. Leave this and speak of a considered matter
For every free man of keen intellect and nobility

18. My poetry, grammar, and philosophy
Have been ascribed, amid the pipes, to senility