1. O Amr, you have been granted a status
That was not for any watchman or porter

2. People have an elephant as their leader
While you, O Amr, are God's elephant, not people's

3. You have a trunk of truthfulness that did not disappoint you
For it is an instrument of generosity and heroism

4. If you wanted to gain wealth through it you would have acquired gains
Or sought triumph, charging forth like a sword and an axe

5. Who can withstand the trunk you are endowed with?
When you strike a skull with it on top of a head

6. Or who sees it and does not bestow his robe of honor upon you
Do not be denied, for Truth has no people

7. You made me drink a cup of humiliation one day when you ignored me
So drink from my cup, for a cup is repaid with a cup

8. I have tasted bitterness from it many times, O Abu Hassan
So be patient, for you too are, like it, a taster

9. Do not praise me or my poetry if hardship befalls us
And if you bite your lips and grind your molars

10. Thank your glorious trunk, for thanks to it
You tasted abundantly before my poetry or me

11. For you are more renowned, before poetry, by your knowledge
Upon which there is fire, and by your mirror-bright brow

12. You carried a nose all people see
Projecting from an inclined head plainly, not by measurement