1. Listen, O Ibn al-Junayd, and hear,
Though you have no hearing,

2. And you have no benefit,
And you have no harm.

3. To separation is your rule,
Not to union like this.

4. To divorce since the day
You were subdued to rejection.

5. To misery, to defeat,
To ill luck, to bereavement,

6. To anxiety, to sorrow,
To vexation, to severance.

7. To the heart's burning,
To the tears' flowing.

8. To wearing misery that has
No relief as long as you live.

9. Misery that does to the body
Like fire does to wax.

10. Were you promised the farm
And the vineyard and the crops?

11. And half of the house?
Or a third? Or a quarter?

12. And her lavish dowry
Of clothes and slippers?

13. So why, and how much,
Placing over placing?

14. And how many jugs,
And pots made of clay?

15. And how much dyed land whose
Dye is henna from perfuming?

16. Far be you, far be you
From coral and ambergris.

17. So do not be struck down, for no
Evil is predestined but affliction.

18. And desist from talk that makes
The molars ache from extraction.

19. For a estranged wife's bread
Is bread hard to swallow.

20. Do you hope for favor from one
Whose hand is locked from favoring?

21. And if this escapes your honor
From slander and from stabbing,

22. You have not tasted the bitterness of
Wrongdoing, no matter the tasting.

23. You have torn into tatters
That cannot be mended.

24. You are the soiled pocket
And the narrow width.

25. You are the filthy onlooker
And the talebearer and the swindler.

26. Curse be upon you, O despicable one,
O more disgraced than a field rat.

27. Tomorrow the dowry will be taken
With all sorts of slapping,

28. You will pay while still young
With no refusal and no prevention.

29. And your in-laws are all
Grabbing you like a hyena.

30. So you will not be spared a slap
Or a punch or a bite.

31. And the first circumciser will come
Like a sharpened lion.

32. So you will not defend a right,
And does a right have defending?

33. And whoever penetrated before
Is the most entitled to penetrate.

34. So if you desire the counting of hands
From one to seven,

35. Then expose your stomach to flogging
And your head to cutting.

36. It’s as if I see you, if I envision,
In forgiveness and coat of mail,

37. With a flashing blade in your right
Outshining lightning in its flashing,

38. You have thundered like red clouds,
Fever of ghosts and hilltops,

39. And you have inclined angrily
Like the succession of even and odd,

40. While the hooves fly from beneath
Or hide from the hooves.

41. For if you come to polytheism
You have come with heresy,

42. He will appoint you over the dunghill
And take over the teat.

43. If you submit, you will not be worth
A single groat, not even a trifle!

44. And we will make you wear the hat of disgrace,
Elevated hat of disgrace.

45. And if he is allied with lowering and raising,
The Lord of the Hill is, before you, not removed from the hill!

46. May Allah pelt you, O complacent one, O firmly attached at the teat,
With long-nosed milkweed, or longer than milkweed,

47. It has a head, if you pull it out,
In the form of sprouting,

48. It pricks you inside your mouth
With quite a prick.

49. For you are not of clay in heat
Nor of wet wood.

50. Nay! You are glass not fused
At the crack.

51. So do not take pride in a people
Whom you did not match in rhyming.

52. If you were right in origin
You were not right in branch.