✧1“But now they mock me, men younger than I am, whose fathers I would have refused to entrust with my sheep dogs. Copy✧2What use to me was the strength of their hands, since their vigor had left them? Copy✧3Gaunt from poverty and hunger, they gnawed the dry land, and the desolate wasteland by night. Copy✧4They plucked mallow among the shrubs, and the roots of the broom tree were their food. Copy✧5They were banished from among men, shouted down like thieves, Copy✧6so that they lived on the slopes of the wadis, among the rocks and in holes in the ground. Copy✧7They cried out among the shrubs and huddled beneath the nettles. Copy✧8A senseless and nameless brood, they were driven off the land. Copy✧9And now they mock me in song; I have become a byword among them.