Sol 6.1

  1. May God send down upon ʿUbayd a serpent

    Against which neither ritual breaths nor incantations avail.

  2. A mountain dweller, it travels whenever it is shrouded

    By night, and lurks by day, unseen.

  3. Split wide at both mouth-corners, its fang drips

    Venom which, as you see, is neither feared nor guarded against.

  4. Its neck has turned green, while the rest of its body

    Is pale and smooth, shining like a lamp in darkness.

  5. And it seems to have donned, over its upper coloring,

    A cloak, one of those garments wear has made threadbare.

  6. Speckled, it takes the road's middle when there draws near

    To it the evening, as though it were a doubled well-rope.

  7. Horned, time granted it respite, so it lived to see

    ʿĀd; and there is no cure for a bite he suffers from it.

  8. Or a serpent with two stripes, settled by

    Its forefathers in a towering mountain with forbidding peaks.

  9. So it grew up in a cave whose recesses are dark;

    Neither the wind nor winter's cold chills it.

  10. No sun has reached it, and it has made a pact with the cave's depths,

    So its day and its evening there are alike.

  11. If it bit both edges of a rock, the rock would fly apart

    From its fang, in shards like fragments of date stones.

  12. Or a pitch-black one: by day it lies concealed,

    Lurking by the road; then, when it sees night, it travels.

  13. In its eye is an inward squint, and in its snout

    Flatness; and its fangs are like knives.

  14. It meets ʿUbayd walking in a single garment,

    Perfumed, already wearied by the long night journey,

  15. On an ill-omened night, when its guides are bewildered,

    Wearing neither a leather boot to protect him nor a shoe.

  16. Then it pierces him at the ankle with a whetted fang,

    Keen: when it bears down upon a bone, it cleaves it.

Sol 6.1