Al-Harith begins his narration by noting that he had come to town to settle some business, but that the winter weather was so severe there that he stayed indoors as much as possible. Work required that he leave his lodging once day, and he came upon a crowd of people who had gathered around an old man naked, save for a turban wrapped from a handkerchief and “breeched with a napkin” (i.e., a loincloth). (Later overpainting, perhaps a repair, almost entirely concealed the naked man, who stands in the archway.) The inadequately dressed man addresses the crowd in verse:

"O people, nothing can announce to you my poverty More truly than this, my nakedness in the season of cold. So from my outward misery, judge ye The inward of my condition, and what is hidden of my state. And beware a change in the truce of fortune: For know that I was once illustrious in rank, I had command of plenty, and of a blade that severed; My yellow coins served my friends, my lances destroyed my foes".