1. O you who bears a name and nickname
Derived from praise and beauty

2. Do you begrudge paper and pen to a brother
While you have been saturated with gifts of fortune?

3. By my life, your aloofness has strengthened my suspicions
And weakened my hopes, though they were not weak

4. Why not, when you have degraded my status, belittling
My worth, making light of me and my weight

5. Abu Hasan, O intimate of my soul and its companion
My support in tribulations and my pillar

6. Is one like you, after wisdom, knowledge and good counsel
Acting aloof and scornful towards me, then not acknowledging it?

7. O rulers, I make my complaint as one wronged
By a hero whose tyranny knows no equal

8. Does a brother for whom my heart is a sealed pledge
Ignore me and turn away his letter in negligence?

9. Goodness to you! How many sorrows have you harvested from me
While you know not what you reap thereby

10. You were aloof and aloof were your eyes from friendship
You ignored my opinion, leaving it to slander and censure

11. Who chooses a friend not sympathetic to him
Is associated with ignorance and weakness

12. How many have recited verses to me
To weaken or strengthen my resolve

13. Beware calling for the affection of one who spurns you
And seeking sincerely one who does not seek you

14. Like one who crosses the sea on horseback
Or crosses the land seeking ships

15. Or one who builds on shifting sands
His edifice ever crumbling as he builds

16. I have examined my case to see if I erred
But found no fault, neither front nor back

17. I beseech you by the House with its smoothed stone
And the Witnessed Site from the hill of al-Budn

18. Will you fold your shoulders against those who slander me
Though you have folded many wonders of time?

19. Strange that you would do so, you who have spanned
The wonders of fate from age to age

20. I never expected you to give ear to the witness of eyes
Yet now you listen to ears

21. Or has indifference corrupted that loyalty
So you no longer hear it praised?

22. You imprisoned a brother in the prison of cares
Release him with reproach from that jail

23. And be not one who freely lends his hearing and paper
To blame, while claiming to be above reproach

24. Save me from the grief of your rejecting my sanctity
For grief at losing the abode, not to mention other griefs

25. It is as though, having left a house and homeland
I were driven from the Gardens of Eden

26. Life is but two conditions: one a stay
On the plain, the other steeped in grief

27. I remember days and nights in which
Their beauty was like a garden at dawn

28. Covenants now gone, praised as if
They were embraces of joy in security's raiment

29. We treated you kindly, so show kindness, for every free man
Is a brother, humbled in state, wearing a cloak

30. If my errors in my book came in succession
Do not fault me for what came from my mind

31. You were unjust, and if I err, your injustice
Caused my lapse, though injustice is worse than error