1. Do you threaten me with disgrace? Would that I knew!
Is this the reward for my poetry,

2. And this was your recompense for my praise,
That exhausted my talent and the toil of my thought?

3. What did you spare in railing that could be used
To dishonor a kindred composer of prose and verse?

4. If that threat to take my life away
Was in earnest, as you told me, may you live long!

5. And some people frightened me, saying,
“You will get barrels of afflictions from Buha.”

6. And they said, “He will give you poisons
That will make my guts flow, though I know nothing of it.”

7. And they sent you a sharpened sword,
To strike me with it in the back.

8. And to cook me well-done after slaughtering me
And eat of my intestines and rear-parts.

9. So thunder and lightening in your threats against me,
And say whatever good or evil you wish.

10. And be like a billy-goat with tusks and horns,
Or like a dog with fangs and claws.

11. You will get what you have prepared a skin for,
And if you tanned it, it would peel from the heat.

12. You forgot our battle on the six days of Badr,
With what made you forget the event of Badr’s day?

13. And you showed me the ears of a donkey,
And the eyes of a bitch and the fangs of a pig.

14. And when you fled, you killed “retreat”,
And returned, so you were both “advance” and “retreat.”

15. And had a sign of my victory not come to me,
You would not have won any victory when I died.

16. He made you drink cups of cuffing with his slipper,
You got drunk on drinking them, without wine.

17. But I took it as merely tipsiness
And the carpet of thanks is folded after being spread.

18. I extended it, and after limiting me, he said,
The sign came with extension and limitation.

19. So do not be reckless like the cambahsti
Lead astray by what the liar told him.

20. And be like the ass eating colocynth from the Byzantine ruler
Among the bosoms of Egypt’s women.

21. And the foe had prepared there armies
For Turturi son of Khori to incite confusion.

22. And they had planned there strange affairs,
Because of what they told Bakhtnasr.

23. So, you would be a billy-goat and your bitch
If you had any reason for any free man.

24. They cut off your nose when you were a cunt,
And none lamented that, O Labkar!

25. And the mother of the maid Khurazad, when
She was seen by the Uqayri not a virgin,

26. The embryo voided feces next to her,
At their soothsayers with amulet and magic.

27. I seek refuge for you, O hidden one, from one who comes to you
While his face drips from his nocturnal emission.