“Don’t you even know the basics,
how things have been since the earliest days,
when Adam and Eve were first placed on earth?
The good times of the wicked are short-lived;
godless joy is only momentary.
The evil might become world famous,
strutting at the head of the celebrity parade,
But still end up in a pile of dung.
Acquaintances look at them with disgust and say, ‘What’s that?’
They fly off like a dream that can’t be remembered,
like a shadowy illusion that vanishes in the light.
Though once notorious public figures, now they’re nobodies,
unnoticed, whether they come or go.
Their children will go begging on skid row,
and they’ll have to give back their ill-gotten gain.
Right in the prime of life,
and youthful and vigorous, they’ll die.