قل لجار الشط ما هذا الوسخ — Al Sari Al Raffa

Say to the neighbor by the riverbank: “What is this filth?”

This is the Tigris; strip and kneel down.

And bathe, for its water is free to use,

not forbidden to a filthy body.

And let the water endure the grime

you were steeped in; escape it, sloughing it off.

It is no disgrace to see it plentiful

for you; and saltwort comes from the salt-flat sand.

You have exposed yourself to an asp with lowered head,

which spits venom whenever the asp exhales.

What blame falls on al-Milhi, when he was fair to us

and sought the truth when told, “Seek it”?

I said, when I saw him lavishing attention

on the virile-cocked man: “Oh, the old man’s disgrace!”

How many of his feasts we fasted through,

when we saw what had been cooked there:

fish that paralyzes whoever sees it,

and drink that fills the belly with wind.

A house where, for the hunter of oryx,

there is a snare buried in the earth, and a trap.

The drinkers find there, if they arrive,

dead narcissus and disfigured basil,

and a son of water, his armor thick with rust,

who has lain anchored in salt for an age and become firmly lodged;

and a gazelle to whom the heart clings,

and whenever a fornicator sees him, he swoons.

The lover departs from him destitute,

with no marrow-filled bone in his body.

Take your palm for a stroll across his bald pate,

and over the crown; do more if he grows haughty.

And when his fires flare fiercely,

then wring his ears: the flames will die down and subside.