1. There is reward for every kindness, my reward
For my love of you is the loss of my dignity

2. Whenever I'm mentioned at a gathering
You push away the memory, breaking my heart

3. For this and more that my patience cannot bear
With even the least gratitude from me

4. I thought you were swords against my fate
Yet you were the swords of my fate against me

5. How many cups of sorrow revolved around me
As many as cups of wine revolved around me

6. So do not blame me if I rave one day
When you are drunk from my intoxication

7. How many nights were reversed upon us
Not as they were destined by fate

8. So blessed were those compared to a thousand months
And cursed are these compared to a thousand months

9. Do not assign it a time at dawn
It was conceived but not born at dawn

10. Time casts no arrows but through slaughter
And I loose no arrows but through my throat

11. I'm told it's barren but my mind
Is drowning in a thousand seas

12. The drowning man cannot count the waves—leave off
Reckoning me for the sins of time

13. Would you ask the drowning man in the sea
When did the drowning ask for pearls?

14. As if time tortures the secret in me
For what it gets from torturing my secret

15. May God requite on the day we parted
With my tears for leaving Egypt

16. What happens when you're gone from it
Perhaps the Nile will cease its flow?

17. Can it be bare of its morn or night
Of the two lights, sun and moon?

18. The ignorant know not my worth
But I know he'll know when I'm gone

19. I'll wake in the best abode
While he wakes atop the worst grave

20. I did not hope but I have hope
In the noble who grants rest

21. Would I refuse if I came to a noble one
Whose nobility grants rest to the weary?

22. My brothers and brothers in public
I count you but what brother in private?

23. No good comes to you with good
By which you treat me well or ill

24. Never have I closed to you my giving hand
Or unveiled to you my difficult face

25. Nor deprived you of the mention of good
So why deprive me of the good mention?

26. Will my enemy aid me in their passion
Against my war with time, my foe?

27. God forbid any but you aid me
And had you wished, you would have aided me

28. Yes, equals to hopes that answer
Tenfold when I call one

29. When chances appeared and passed
Despite my resolve and patience

30. So do not blame me for lack of money
Since I did not blame you for lack of life

31. There's no way to live on through myself
Or live on through my memory

32. Today I profit more than the one you see
For I buy a life with plenty

33. I have moved from my purse to my lifespan
What I spent from my coffer of treasure

34. If they piled dust upon a poor man
They piled my ample wealth upon me

35. The grave to him was a resting place
While the grave to me is a bag of dust

36. How many neglected, massive pits
Neglected, even if built like graves

37. Oh would that I had an ear and eye
When my night proves fruitless at dawn

38. When they hesitate over the one dispatched
And instruct to deepen the grave

39. When they turn their backs and leave me be
With whoever readied my shroud and washing

40. How little of my clothes do I pack
How little remains of my scent

41. They led me prisoner through the jail of nights
A captive who despairs of freedom's dawn

42. Oh bearer, hurry! I am a stranger
Among them in my resting place

43. Eyes may lie and then weep
Eyes may lie and then flow

44. My presence there discomforts them, how freely
Had I known, it would have pained me too

45. Leave that beloved scarce able
To finish his day, discarded and broken

46. In the end the matter is they'll take him out
That itself is the end of every matter

47. They dragged me and I could not resist
Had it not been for death, struggl could not cease

48. And his mourners plunged into my inheritance
Their arrival cut short my legacy

49. If there remains debt in that abode
Then worry can excuse my debt

50. And say to those who bid me farewell: Bear me
For the difficulty of my matter is not hard

51. If my stay an hour wearies you
For after it is the separation of fate

52. I will leave from my friend, from sight
From hearing, from speech, from thought

53. My death will desolate the onlooker
The death of my memory will desolate the listener

54. The rain tumbled and I became a wasteland
With no life, abandoned in the waste

55. Had they tried to mend my broken bone
I would not have asked for mending

56. Their surplus turned to plenty
While my surplus was what I had

57. Oh God, bless their wealth
And let it not require my poverty

58. Do not increase, for rain can pardon
And do not diminish, for wind can scatter

59. Let the sky not deprive me of its drops
For the sky did not stint my hands of rain

60. Remaining beneath a night that does not travel
The star that travels by night

61. The specter dreads its journey to it
Stumbling between smooth and rocky ground

62. If they rejoice at leaving me well
Then woe is my sorrow at leaving them ill

63. The consoler stood for them and their family
The disrober stood for washing me

64. Will you leave your palaces bereft?
For I was severed from my palace

65. What remains between the living and dead
But a farewell stretched thin by parting?

66. He passes the memory by briefly
And its thought wearies him, so he says, be gone

67. Oh, begone memory! I am
The drowning man, though dust has settled

68. Had the tender eyed one seen my face
His tears would have flowed at seeing my distress

69. How the youth yearns beyond his reach
Baring himself without nakedness

70. Would life complain of ungrateful people
And death hope in them some kindness?

71. So when my memory passes by
Forgive me, though some found me bitter

72. Say what you will, for the saying
Is not of my doing or confusion

73. Take heed of days—I did, in vain—
My caution did not help me

74. If they refrain from carving my memory
What shame in my side not carved?

75. Trust my response, O people of love
The hearing will be solemn in its solemnity

76. And God hears you all
And the writers flow against me

77. If I spoke wildly, a freeman
Can be praised by the freeman's tongue

78. Chaste reputations settle when covered
Beneath dust inside the graves

79. Slandering the innocent, as you know
Is not the way on the Day of Reckoning

80. So do not reckon in your grave anything
You would not want to face on Reckoning Day

81. My God, do not torment me, I admit
And pardoning the admitter is best

82. Lighten my steps the Day of the Path
For I am heavy with my burden

83. With the lightness of my speech in remembrance
Lighten when the Caller calls heavied my back