Sol 5.6

  1. O dark-lipped beauty, sweet, abundant water, cooling

    the thirst of a traveler journeying through the noonday heat—

  2. one who has sighted the landmark of the water he is bound for

    and made straight toward it on his weary, full-grown camel—

  3. and then the radiant sun set on him, after

    he had poured away the remnants of his turbid water;

  4. and through the night he scoured the earth, against his wishes,

    employing the methods of the experienced, discerning man,

  5. until, as his night passed away, declining toward its end,

    and the first gleam of his radiant dawn approached,

  6. he remembered that he had strayed from the ground of his water,

    when already he who remembered had been cut off from the water.

  7. So he went on, wary from fear of the long separation,

    at a time when remorse does the rueful no good—

  8. is no sweeter than the flowing stream of your saliva, drunk deep

    upon a thirst-scorched liver and a heart set ablaze.

Sol 5.6