1. I am wretched, for I have no loyalty or pact,
Nor am I one to cherish affection or friendship.

2. I am no keeper of kinship, nor one who remembers
A friend, neither near nor far, for my life.

3. I have no sense of loyalty or justice in affection,
Nor am I true to my strongly sworn vows.

4. I have no discernment, and I am no guided one,
To a path that leads rightly and directly to the goal.

5. In me there is no good that my companions hope for,
No righteous deed, no rectitude.

6. If an absent one forgets me, I do not keep in touch.
If friends visit, I repay them with coldness.

7. If they write to me, I do not answer with even a word -
These are the flaws particular to me alone.

8. I am as if, when a friend becomes an enemy,
I obey him more than a servant.

9. Yet it is not that I abandon affection
Or break a pact or covenant any day.

10. But it is my nature; I have no resource
In jesting or earnest with me at all.

11. So for the likes of me, when I am such,
Cut off, forbidden, aloof, rejecting intimacy,

12. If my brothers, when I cut them off, would reciprocate
With estrangement, aloofness for aloofness, coldness for coldness,

13. If they would forget my mention and not count me
A friend, and treat me with intentional coldness,

14. I would repent. But I have been afflicted with company
Of generous noblemen, honorable, glorious.

15. They have spoiled me by bearing with my fickleness
And my frequent changes with every intimate.

16. They increased, by pardoning every fault
I committed, and forgiveness for all I manifested.

17. So neither admonishment from an intimate
Availed, nor their blame profited, nor reproach helped.

18. Whoever has patience for what I have described
Has won abundant reward and praise.