1. I wasted my youth and spent my life
Exhausting my mind with delusions

2. Without gaining any reward or benefit
If I die one day, I will have little to show

3. I studied grammar intently to understand
Until I was fed up and my chest tightened

4. All I gained were absurd examples
With Zayd and Amr as subjects

5. Grammatical case rules felt like impositions on me
Nominatives were not my fate

6. The genitives were the sum of my luck
The imperatives cut short my mention

7. And in the science of prosody, I entered ignorant
My lightness spread through every meter

8. So the prosodic feet reminded me of a line
Whose first hemistich was by Al-Ma'arri

9. Mustafa'ilun, mustaf'ilatun, fa'ulun
Nonsense talk, O mother of Amr!

10. And how many days selling meat I counted
As thousands of months of misery

11. But when there were no sales one day
The scales were like Judgment Day

12. My shop became a hell, with my customers
Devils torturing my innermost thoughts

13. With wailing without meat
And chains bound around my neck

14. The torment was prolonged for me there
For my fraud and burden

15. So if the swindlers blame me, I say leave me be
I am in decline in the midst of my life

16. My uncle's mood swings are my woe
His stinginess diminishes my worth

17. For poetry without mastery is lowly
Especially my poetry

18. Since I never studied its canon
Or grammar with Ibn Barri

19. I dabbled in language and grammar
Without knowledge, spreading my fame

20. I do not know what your life is like
I admit I do not know

21. And this is my news, but if you unveiled me
My ignorance would belittle my wisdom

22. It's as if I'm like some people who
When they learn two verses, become a reciter