Sol 5.6

  1. He defied right guidance; it had called to him for a while,

    and raced headlong with error through those arenas.

  2. Never did his rebellious demon yearn for a town

    save to draw him near a monastery of devils.

  3. And youths, among whom the flower of refinement

    was lovelier and fresher than fragrant blossoms,

  4. walked toward the wine with a rook’s stride, then turned back,

    while the wine made them walk with the stride of chessboard viziers.

  5. At dawn they sped toward it like arrows loosed

    from bows; by evening they returned like curved date-stalks.

  6. They scattered among the precincts of the churches, amid

    those gardens and the moon-faced beauties of the halls.

  7. Their drinking, at the outset of their gathering, was

    the drinking of kings; and they slept like paupers.

  8. Until among them the bell was made to speak by

    a waist-bedecked Byzantine priest of the offerings,

  9. who deemed old wine a faith—how fine the man

    who counts the pleasure of his worldly life as part of religion!

  10. Their goblets spur the fair-necked beauties, dressed in

    red underrobes amid the green gardens.

  11. As though its goblets, when water taps them, were

    roses clasped by the tips of eglantine.

Sol 5.6