When the day

Of reckoning came,

I was driven from

My own house;

I was also driven

From my hometown --

I hurried away

With my infant son

On my hands.

I was obliged

To disappear

From the country;

I was reduced

To extreme distress

In the foreign lands;

And in the end

I was kept in a jail

For a number of months. . .

When I encountered

Those various calamities,

My intimate associates

Were removed from me;

My followers and friends

Were more and more dispersed --

Why have all these things

Befallen me from above!

When asked why was it then

That, abandoning the funds

I hurried away with the child

I explained it this way,

'The union between me

And the great funds

Rested on the ground of gain;

That between me and my kid

Was of Heaven's appointment.

'Where the bond of union

Is its profitableness,

When the pressure of poverty,

Calamity and injury come,

The parties abandon one another;

When it is of Heaven's appointment,

They hold in the same circumstances

To one another, that's it. Thereupon,

Between abandoning one another

And holding to one another

The difference is great.'

Truly, the union which originates

Without any cause, as it usually goes,

Ends in separation without any cause.