1. May God have mercy on that afflicted one
Who has been deprived of all joy;

2. Once a blossoming plant, now broken and withered,
Battered down and torn asunder.

3. The bleak nights' loneliness tents around him,
And his old friends all shun him.

4. The heavens rain sorrow down on him
As heavily as they rain poison on the earth.

5. Misfortune assails him with its arrows,
Lost and wandering, a target abandoned.

6. Blow follows blow, as if death itself
Had summoned them and bids them come.

7. If he would stem their tide with his hands,
They attack and overwhelm him.

8. He lays his body in the dust, and who
Can see that broken form without weeping?

9. Not for love or loss of a beloved
Or desire to seek solitude and fast -

10. Only grief, that severed so many branches
And cleaved itself to him, refusing to let go.

11. He places a hand, as a shield, between his heart
And the arrows that wound the sorrowing.

12. He meets the fiery breath of a blaze
That consumes, the fervent anguish of a despairing heart.

13. Bewildered, whenever he seeks to rise up,
He finds no strength left to stand.

14. Misery has etched its record in his life
Until it shows, engraved, on his face.

15. His words are in vain, whenever he calls
On a helper, savior, friend.

16. I only wish to see the suffering ended,
Our bones and flesh consumed, annihilated.

17. What soul, when disasters strike,
Is spared agony and poison?

18. God forbid you should abandon this miserable one!
God forbid you should fail to show mercy!

19. O heaven, lift him up! O earth, swallow him!
Perhaps he will find peace.

20. O fire, be coolness and peace for our friend,
Whispering solace and comfort and bliss.

21. O people, a light has nearly gone out,
A star that shone on us with its beams.

22. What do we own, now that misfortune
Has taken everything, only leaving gloom?

23. See, my hands carry aid to the orphan,
To clothe him, wretched and naked and deprived.

24. Let him find, in our gladness, gladness,
And, in his misery, find only devastation.

25. Let us taste the pure water in a goblet of crystal,
While that lad tastes only bitter drought.

26. Let us seek knowledge and leave him ignorant,
Lost in the darkness of unknowing.

27. When, O when, will we look toward him,
Dispelling his sorrows and griefs?