1. O Abu Yusuf, you are the eye of the expert,
The eye of the right, the judicious, the insightful one.

2. You pursued the matter of our promise,
The pursuit of one firm in matters.

3. Yet you failed our appointment about wine,
When it was the key to the door of joy.

4. And you said it is alcohol; it does not cease
To lead to every major misfortune.

5. So while you see people, if drunk,
Ridden like donkeys.

6. Do you feel assured that the generous one
Among them, having exceeded the limit of the poor,

7. And whom alcohol causes to lose dignity
until he dismounts from his camel or mule?

8. Do you feel assured the Bedouin Arab will not go around
Among their great and small

9. And turn this one about to face him
And strip that one of his heart with a roar?

10. And that their day will meet them
As a day of foolishness and ebullience?

11. So he who is plastered with pottery shards among them
And covered in straw matting,

12. And he whom you see then come from the vanguard,
Bold, and he who is a fearful coward-

13. And how many are felled and how many are wounded,
And how many are battered and how many smashed!

14. Grant me assurance - will this not make me fear
The passage of days and passage of times?

15. Should I not fear the creeping of the tribe
At night to the soft boy of the tribe?

16. And the darkness being severed and the spears of stomachs
Fixed in the watering troughs?

17. Is this, by the Gospel of Jesus thus,
By the Torah of Moses, by the truth of Scriptures?

18. So if you have not feared this nor looked at it
With the eye of conscience,

19. Then you are, beyond it, a knowing one,
And one of understanding may be content with little.