A Story

One night there was a gathering in my neighborhood, with people of every kind coming together in it. When the musician's voice rose from the alley, the cries and clamor of the lovers reached the sky. There was a beloved of mine with a face like an angel; I said to him: my lovely darling, why don't you come join us with the others, to light up our party like a candle? I heard that slender, silver-bodied one, who was walking away and saying to himself: I don't yet have a beard like the grown men; it is not manly to sit among men. Do not expect anyone more disgraced than that soft man whose face turns black with shame before his beard even grows. One must flee from a man without honor, whose disgrace has poured away the good name of real men. A son who sits in with vagrant company, tell his father to wash his hands of any good from him. Do not grieve over his ruin and destruction, for an unworthy son is better off dying before his father.