1. To whom do I voice complaints unheard?
And spend my life between hope and despair.

2. How often I put off to days what I pretend,
Innovation produces not but more innovation.

3. I thought to disentangle myself from encamping and moving,
Or hopes saying: take this, leave this.

4. No soul accompanied me that told me not
The stages of glory, had it seen the eye of a lion.

5. What is glorious and excellent from me
Shall accompany time, though it tread the nostrils of death.

6. Shall I accept inferiority while my fathers are great?
And the house of glory has insight and audience?

7. I will mount among calamities the greatest
Terror, and what the Merciful protects is not lost.

8. And I will not be like one who seeks and whose goal
And end of seeking is for food and fullness.

9. Shall life pass and my opponent not fear contending with me,
My adversary and neighbor derive no benefit from nearness?

10. Between my ribs is a resolve needing great determination
Did the breast of this time encompass it, it would not suffice

11. So no land but I will be in it
A pillar for the disdainful, rain for the seeker of rainwater.

12. How much has time seen in me enduring perseverance
Since the patience of a twig is not found in a trunk

13. And how much has it made me drink from a cup bitter
In taste from toil and commerce.

14. And no maiden of its calamities shot me
But I stamped the brow of panic with my patience.

15. Ask the sincere about me, did they accompany me
A day of time but loyalty was with me?

16. I meet those who wrong me smiling
As though he violated no covenant and betrayed none.

17. And ask them did any free man keep faith with me
And not share in violating me nor sell me?

18. May they lose them – the loss of an eye in which
Is hidden a mote or like the loss of a limb in pain!

19. I have pondered my state and theirs
And it was clear to me my offense to them is my piety.

20. Alas from sighs whenever they rose
In my breast, almost igniting fire from my ribs

21. Impelling them a sorrow raging from regret
Nurturing the regret of the duped from stupidity.

22. And that is not over wealth which I enjoyed
A time then squandered in the extravagance of the wastrel.

23. Nor over a sin I feared its consequences
With people partisans, one secure and one frightened.

24. But over pearls whose jewels shine
In a necklace of every harmonious order.

25. I crowned them with a band I do not seek compensation
For them though among my people I have little.

26. And I was more right to them than they were and how many gifts
Were lost and what is past goes not back.

27. And their words deceived me and people are
Between deceived and deceiver.

28. If their origin were to shells
I would have bounty keeping me from craving.

29. But it is the innate jewel assured
From fragmentation the passage of days and nature.

30. What makes me keep away from them is intensity of cooing
And the asylum of heedlessness from convention and shock.

31. Or one dislodging the rooted not known
In its deterring any day of stinting or calm.

32. Nor complaining in carrying burdens of annoyance
Nor inclining to foolishness or squareness.

33. It flows with the wind, be it gentle or impetuous
So excellent an emergence from dreadful emergence!

34. With this or that I dispel the darkness
When extends the night of the helpless supplicant.

35. Glory refuses I should accept other than pleasure
And solid counsel and resolve not borrowed.

36. How ugly is humiliation for the noble free man! And what
Is more evil and uglier than glory for the sluggard!

37. Why do I chatter in my breast? While the shoulder of the ground
Is remote and spacious.

38. And every land when I set my course to it my homeland
And every people when I joined them my intimates

39. And I have of merit that polished it and ennobled it
And a resolve exceeding every towering one.

40. Glory I emancipate and letters outstanding
And the pinnacle of glory my lounge and seat.

41. Wit is my nature I am known for
And every meaning from words my coinage.

42. Your despair for my returning after my withdrawal –
The turns of the Tigris will suffice me for the draft.

43. The loser duped will know his deal with us
And who wasted the excellent for the paltry.

44. There is no good in an abode where the generous are wretched
And master followed joins follower.

45. How I blamed my people! Nay, how I ordered them
To excise the disease of enmity among them but was not obeyed!

46. Then after my despair I found naught but my departure
From them to a care diverting me and extended.

47. If they pasture I will pasture and reason is gained
While pasturing is better and who for the blind with hastening?