A Complaint About Debt

Others enjoy pleasure and joy, while I suffer the misery of debt. Everyone has some business at hand, and I am the one plagued by debt. I owe both what I owe to God and what I owe to people; should I settle my religious duties first, or pay off my debts? My expenses run past all limits, my debts beyond all bounds; should I worry about my spending, or worry about my debt? I flinch at no document except the record of my liabilities, and I dread no person except a witness to my debt. I owe money across the city and I owe across the district; I owe money in the alley and I owe inside my own house. From dawn to dusk I stay lost in thought, wondering where on earth I might suddenly find hope of clearing my debt. People flee from debt, but I, in all sincerity, after my prayers and pleas, ask God for a loan. My good name scattered to the wind like a beggar's dignity, from begging a loan at every beggar's door. If the master does not put in a good word for me before the king, how can poor Obeyd ever find a cure for his debt? That master, the glory of the state and the faith, whose generous hand alone no one in this world ever saw as the true remedy for debt.