Sol 5.6

  1. Are you content to lag behind and dawdle,

    stubbornly persisting in obstinacy and refusal?

  2. What have I to do with tales that

    turn one away from three-stringed and two-stringed music?

  3. Indeed, my soul has thrilled to drunken raptures

    and yearned for wine long aged in the jars,

  4. just as the revelers’ ewers thrilled

    to the sound of the bottles’ laughter.

  5. And what a day, when a maiden moves about it,

    with two roses blooming upon her cheeks—

  6. slender-waisted, and when she sways,

    she sways like a supple bamboo stem.

  7. Before her I had never seen a sun appear,

    nor a moon atop a bough of ben.

  8. May God curse him—what a farting old man,

    the din of whose flatulence reaches Nahrawan!

  9. Yet his head is tough and unyielding,

    steadfast amid thrusts coming from every side.

  10. Before him I never saw another head

    become wholly dedicated to a raging war,

  11. nor, when hands struck it blow after blow

    and the rings of close-worn mail closed around it.

  12. To one whose two palms are munificence and bounty,

    pouring rich gifts upon us—

  13. a noble man who never holds back from largesse,

    a generous giver without peer in generosity.

  14. In him all hopes have reached their utmost, since

    he has become the furthest limit of every desire.

Sol 5.6