English Translation 

A recital of [my] misfortunes, O my neighbours, the following I shall tell you,
Such as has not been found either in the past [lit. in the buried] or in your lifetime.
An ungoverned, kingless, and lordless heart
Has thrown me into a deep well without a way up [lit. with broken steps or steps that stop short of the bottom],
Into which, desiring death by drowning, I descend by the steps of my downfall,
Rising and falling always in the stormy sea [or, deep water, i.e. of the well].

My house, it has fallen down, [the one] I have long been a-building.
The workmen [themselves] were not to blame, but it was the loose clay that gave way.
I found loose clay where I had hoped to find rock;
My house! It has fallen down!

My house! It has pushed down its foundations.
The workmen were not to blame, but the rock gave way.
I found loose clay where I had hoped to find rock;
The house I had long been a-building has collapsed!
And that’s how my house fell down! Build it up again!
Change for it the place that harms it.
He who changes [his] neighbourhood changes his fortune;
For there is a difference of kind [or appearance] in every span of land:
Some [land] there is which is white, some black, some [lit. and] red.
More than this. There should you … …

(Godfrey Wettinger and Mikiel Fsadni, Peter Caxaro’s Cantilena: A Poem in Maltese (Malta, 1968), p. 38.)