1. Long have I suffered the contempt of a people,
Like a thirsty oryx finding no place for its nose-rope among them.

2. Men whom if you call upon for help with a task,
You find them averse to generosity or absent.

3. When a small gift is presented to them,
You see them recoiling in meanness, though it was no burden to bear.

4. I blame my soul, for I nursed steeds with distinctive cheek-marks,
And shouldered the burdens of she-camels while young.

5. Yet when I load them with hardships and trials,
The rascals of the people spread their ignorance,

6. And some fools cover up the ignorance of others.
Ah, how often I raise up the fool only to be dragged down by him,

7. And am injured by one who combines foolery and ignorance!
Pregnant with hope for promised gifts, they persisted

8. For months and years, though they never approached childbirth.
They conspired to delay their promise, then grew bold

9. In meanness until they disregarded both promise and delay.
They are men with docked tails who will not grow in generosity,

10. And if one day they ride forth, you would think them but footmen.
How different you are from those who release streams when the year lacks rain,

11. Apportioning water points when the clouds fail!
They are brothers to the rain cloud,

12. Withdrawing along with it if it is miserly towards their land.
They bed down threadbare, clenching their leather water bags,

13. And they have driven poverty and hunger away from us.
Enclosures of meaning brimming with water, the life vein

14. Whose channels show the way when one is lost,
They ward away rabble from them for the stranger’s sake—

15. Even had they desired otherwise, still they would cede.
If greeted with "Peace," they do not deny the latter half.

16. And if peers contend, they do not recognize justice.
When the gaping of wolves’ jaws parts on one flank,

17. Though unprovoked, they cram them with sapless brushwood.
Weighty yet nimble in their hands, as though

18. They had flung towery heads of palms at the foe.
As if the bridle bits of lively steeds called forth from them,

19. When enraged, a streaming pestilence and madness,
If summoned, they race the winds, blustering tempests

20. That kick up the soil from the brink of a valley or a dune.
A youth cries out at night, stoking the fire of his hearth:

21. “Kindlers of settlement fires, make your fuel substantial!”
“You who watch over the leather sack for the swords,

22. Remove the scaffold and saddle-cloth from their withers!”
Those are my people, not those whose discourse

23. To the besetter of pasturelands or night raider is “Begone!"