1. I have become the poorest of those who go and return,
With nothing left in my poverty except my hands.

2. Sitting in a house that contained none but me,
So when I lay down, I lay not fully outstretched.

3. In it remains only the traces of a palm mat,
And a pillow that belonged to the rightly-guided mother.

4. It is thrown upon a couch whose stuffing holds
Lice like scattered sesame seeds.

5. And bugs like little cockroaches in nature
From a suspect or an insomniac in its stuffing.

6. They make my skin shrivel until it seems
From their biting that it will melt away.

7. And you see ticks stuck to my body
Like drinking bowls in the evening and morning.

8. And so the mosquitoes fly, with their feathers
Whenever they get a chance over a bulging vein.

9. And you see the bugs lined up like the Zanj
From every black tent and blacker.

10. And perhaps combined with a group of scorpions
As lethal as the settled turtledoves.

11. And the gecko gestures its tail to me
In the evening, so I see it like a praying finger.

12. This and how much else of the type who spreads out rugs
Appearing similar to continuous calamities.

13. Who shows, if it glides down the page of a notebook,
That the morning breeze has disheveled it.

14. And the rat runs like racehorses
From every bare tent floor and barer.

15. They eat the wood of the ceilings like the teeth
Of carpenter’s saws when sharpened with the file.

16. And as if the spider’s web and home
Were an ode above the reciter’s water jug.

17. And likewise the cricket has a voice like it
Sounding in my hearing like clashing cymbals.

18. And if the bat sees the light of my lantern
It harms its constant flame.

19. And as if the wasp was clothed in a robe
With banners of twill and taffeta.

20. Humming amongst the flies, warbling,
As if it were a hummer and warbler.

21. The insects of a house, if they met an army,
Would put it to flight without hesitation.

22. This while I have a garment you see patched
With every color like the plumes of the hoopoe.

23. If not for misery I would not have been born, and would that
I had not, when my lot in life is this.

24. And how can I be content with life when my ambition
Soars, while my lot is in the deepest abyss?

25. And I see happiness made lawful for a group
Who grew tall neither with abstinence nor virtue.