1. If the successors of a people are good, how wretched
Are the ancestors they succeeded, O clan of Tahir!

2. You have profited by being praised, while you deserve
That your dead be reviled in their tombs.

3. Had they but foreseen the outcome of your affairs,
They would have stifled you at birth, especially the mother of Amir!

4. Lame old hags dragging their legs,
I find you are not content with the praise of a poet.

5. As if you disdain praise, seeing in it
No adequate celebration of your glory.

6. How so, when if you competed with the chaff-tredders,
You would lag behind the others, one after another?

7. Are you not the son of Bushanj, lame and incomplete,
However much you attain, by destiny's decree?

8. The world, of which you are the chief,
Is as nothing to God beside a passing cloud.

9. Had there been in the people a free man or woman,
You would have died, and not come to a rememberer's mind.

10. I suppose that during the Feasts you are the pomp
Of a parade in which the sword-belts glitter.