1. No help from you, Jafar, O Jafar
Leave me to my straying missteps

2. And if the jurist of the folk preaches long
And others find guidance through him, let me disbelieve

3. And I urge my steed of frankness on
Until in rage the grumbler dies

4. And I strike him and his jurisprudence and preaching
Against the wall, for in that I excel

5. Aboud said, "What business have we with his words?
Drunkenness in the view of Sacred Law is forbidden

6. Wine is filth, and the cups that those who drank from them
Will have shattered over their heads on Judgment Day

7. The true God, exalted be His Majesty
Is too great to speak with your shaykh's words

8. So come, let's drink it, though its bubbles
Are like the blond hair of the Circassians

9. And come where the happy folk by nature
Make music with lutes and rebecs

10. The hopeful though they have no hope
The tranquil though all are overjoyed

11. Who take the quintessence of life
And leave the bitter for others

12. We call them the enlightened, though truly
More enlightened than they in God's eyes

13. Have you not seen the cognoscenti, how they became Jews?
Have you not seen the learned, how Nazarene they grew?

14. The sellers of nations with a pen
Who went forward, while the sincere fell behind

15. They sold beliefs for necklaces, and one of them stepped forth
To sell an eloquent heritage that makes the dumb speak

16. The wretches fancied their frauds protected them
Though one like you knows the truth better

17. God forbid that appearances should suffice their Lord
If a fox could, it would become a lion that devours

18. So leave off probity, composure, argumentation—
Knocking heads of money's slaves with your pen

19. And come where those beating their drums for people
Embody frankness, that we may carouse

20. Dancing over their ancestors' graves
A dance just like yesterday's, unchanged

21. Firm in their tribes' principles,
Loyal guardians, betraying no trusts

22. Truly, though loyal their fealty
Bewilders the discerning observer

23. They do not lie, their deeds do not change
Rarely do they show other than what they kept hidden

24. Many we hoped for good from
Now follow the day's opinions and fashions

25. O wand, work magic on my people
I have become most right and most noble

26. O wand, fetch me the rebec, and set me down
Where your tribe, be they gentler or rougher

27. I've become like you—no land, kinfolk, house
No family, just me and my poetry

28. If one tells you "Iraq and its king
Will protect you—fear not, do not waver"

29. There no Balfour's promise bothers anyone
And none there is so crass as to promise

30. No Allenby's troops you need fear one day
No Cox is there, nor is there a Huber

31. No plotting behind the village scenes
That you think are his eyes in his surreptitious glances

32. God forbid that after the Sincere Ones and their land
Anything westerly should change the East

33. Nothing in Iraq, by the Lord of Zamzam,
Save eyes that stare from behind a veil

34. A mote that the fool thinks is something
Because it was watered by Babylonian Euphrates

35. So stay in Arbid, depart not its plain
Save for the grave in which you will be buried