1. Take away from me the friend who wrongs me
And leave the one whose father is blameless

2. I am from a people, if only their ties were cut
It would have been better for me than attachment

3. They eat nothing but the despicable, and desire
Nothing but the coffee of ignorance

4. The destitute, empty-handed, without
Goodness, filled with stinginess

5. As though they were a night without a dawn
Coming to it, or a knot without untying

6. As though in their neighbor's heart is
Resentment against them boiling

7. They are frost without gowns
And the howling of a barren place without shade

8. Their minds in their ignorance are foolish
And their elder is a wanton child

9. And my seriousness - how much it is in vain
Like the one among them who is frivolous

10. Oh, if only when I walked to
Their dwellings, I had no feet

11. Time hurried and its people with it
That one like me would stay with them

12. It was only in their homes
That I was belittled, and between their houses humiliated

13. It was as if when I joined them
I was a man disjointed, without wholeness

14. And I busied myself for a while with them
It was as if I was with them without busyness

15. They cast me away always
With lies, slander, and falsehood

16. And the interiors of words were hurling
Forgetting the hurling, the interiors of arrows

17. And sides turned away from the water that have
No slaking of my thirst or lifting me high

18. Where are those I knew before them
Traveling ways of virtue?

19. Bearing my worries on their hearts
And my burdens upon their backs

20. As if they were straight Yemeni rods
Polished without any polishing

21. How many of them spread generosity
After death, and killed parsimony

22. And obeyed the command of munificence
When it donned him, and the call to giving

23. There is no kinship or relation between us
Yet through their righteousness they are my family

24. And their defense of me enriches me
From having to extend a hand to my sword

25. Were it not for them on a day of clashing
I would not have escaped from its fierce teeth

26. I held others cheap because they
Inflate my prices as I am inflated

27. They are my mountains if I am startled, and for me
On the day of grazing their growth is my plain

28. So when they are forbearing, I am forbearing, and on
A day of revenge, their ignorance is my ignorance

29. They passed away, no eye sees them
Ever again, nor do my messages come to them

30. Yet over their graves, though crumbled
I pour any rainfall and any downpour