1. Your slave today is Abu Hubbih
Striving in the meanness of the soul

2. He competes with beauty in its strength
And hoards coins upon coins

3. He eats while the boys are in their day
The leftovers from what was yesterday

4. He wishes his honor remains unlocked
And his abundant money under guard

5. He knows not the bathhouse, but
At home he heats the water in the sun

6. If he sees a morsel in his pot
He recites over it the Verse of the Throne

7. And if he sees a mouse in his house
He confronts it with sword and shield

8. He is wary lest the one who comes to him
For the fifth discerns his luxuries

9. With hearing, sight, and smell he
Can be detected without taste and touch

10. He locks his doors when eating
Fearing for the food from being grabbed

11. If a guest comes unexpectedly
He meets him with misery and dejection

12. He greets him with discouragement from staying
And afterwards with bread and date molasses

13. If his eating exceeds a morsel
You would see stomping in his ribs

14. These traits were acquired
During my time in the West, my perception

15. The Sultan had known them before
That I am the opposite of that

16. I have not ceased in the breadth of his care
To speak of pleasures and fineries

17. And if a coin appeared in my hand
I would spend it in a gathering of intimacy

18.
Since time has turned me from its quarter

19. And that was not in my assumptions
And I have roamed in trade among a people

20. Whose concern is thriftiness and stinginess
Sometimes in Rome I see among them

21. And sometimes in the land of Persia
So I became of the sons of a people who have

22. And their morals seeped into my soul
I love one who has meanness in himself

23. And kinship leans towards kinship
I was not one who initiated blessing

24. Prosperity led me to misfortune
But the sun of religion since it shone on me

25. Corrected my growth and my planting
Just so is the way of all growth