1. The hound howled when her teats turned yellow,
With a loathsome, ill-omened dye.

2. She drank steadily till she lay stretched out,
On the bare ground between the thorns and stones.

3. The milch camels you see, their black calves clinging to them,
Bellowing with horns that never touch wine.

4. Their eyes and the darkness seem competing
As fires in the blackness of night.

5. As though a perfume seller had made them drunk
With arms' length of soporific yellow bloom.

6. Unleash your hounds and let the greyhounds course
To the ruins, bones, and palaces.

7. What is your command, O servants of God, I ask you,
About a poet ringed with fermenting casks?

8. If you seek to disparage him, know well
That I am a buttress against insult and baseness.

9. No coward who blinks when looked at straight
Can be a match for me in wordy warfare.