1. My beloveds! Do not be surprised at the bags
Of one perplexed in the courtyard of the house looking up

2. He seems a lifeless form, dumbfounded,
Like a dead man were it not for the shuddering of the eyelids

3. And when they turned away, bearing our hearts
On litters, with the mourning-women keening,

4. We remained in the house of the Bereaved, our eyes
As though they were a caravan which the departure of the tribes had misled.

5. When we share out the eyes between us, you see
None of the people except looks askance.

6. And we kiss in the dust those who bore
From the earth traces of the tattoos and amulets.

7. I console myself, though I do not please myself, with intimate friends
Who unfold the knotted necklaces of chastity,

8. Young women who conceal all the fair charms
And glance, behaving weakly, from languid eyes,

9. An estrangement which no plaint of a complainer leaves alone
And a devotion which no rending of a rending woman rends,

10. And who is he whom his steadfastness on estrangement and passion
Leaves with a devotion other than that of the sincere lover?

11. And a visitor to my glory, though I have not seen a visit
To merit except one laden with secret envy,

12. Do not examine me closely, then, till you learn which of us
Fares forth at morning and returns at evening downcast.

13. How do you aspire above me when your shade is thin
While my shade upon the mountain-tops is never-fading?

14. And you are eager that it should be said, "He hopes,"
While I, for the attainment of the heights, am not striving.

15. And I rear the structures of bounty and sweet flowing love,
While you are busied in raising up the stunted date-palm.

16. O sons of my uncle! How much rancour do we conceal from you,
On account of the sharp words between us and biting discourse!

17. And you wished that glory had become cast down
And that for us cutting it off there was no harvest-reaper.

18. Why is it your concern if others have attained a rank above you
When you did not build it up through the complete term of life?

19. And you spurn aside from us what God has unfolded
As though the outshining of dawn were disapproved by the blind.

20. And you said that palm leaves and rushes are the same−
What then when we tried you by the distinguishing properties!

21. Come let us enumerate glory as between us and you
To see which of us surpasses with all the attributes taken away.

22. You possess no glory but the wealth of a carrier of faggots
And there is no praise of you but only from a cheating pleader,

23. You are not the penetration of the interiors by your provisions
But penetrate the interiors of provisions by your greedy bellies:

24. O sons of my uncle! How proudly your minds range at large
With the power of the outstretched arm, brachia like palm-fronds

25. And how every day and night you load us
Upon the back of a stallion suffering from mange

26. Who chafes till he flows from every orifice
And is recited at dawn with ejaculations omitted.

27. Is it right that we should walk in misery while you
Step with the tread of a blood-swollen parasite?

28. And (that) we should consent to less than half from you
While you pile up the confusion of the deceiver?

29. And you never sneezed except with one whose nose was cut off
And you never looked except with the blindness of a blinker

30. And you never rode a riding beast except one docked of tail
Which knocks the saddle-bags with the saddle strap.

31. Maintain the bygone reputation with what does not dishonor it,
For how many a pure basket does not contain purity!

32. And do not gain from the aspect of glory everything
Except a first, prosperous, not mixed with dregs.

33. And be the beginning of glory, not the end of it,
And remain visible and exposed to the test of an examiner,

34. As though it walked proudly between thin, polished blades
And long, hurling spears.

35. They bar the holes of excuse from us and you,
So to excuse there is no way to slip through.