Sol 5.6

  1. Often I set out before the radiant dawn,

    while night lay encamped in its deepest gloom,

  2. and Orion’s stars had not yet sunk from sight,

    as though beneath the green canopy

  3. they swam within a lining of ambergris.

    The horizon—Jupiter had already set within it,

  4. like a pearl in the ear of a dark-hued, wide-eyed beauty;

    and the white stars stood apart from the dusky ones,

  5. as a necklace of jewels gleams.

    I outstripped the first gleam of its radiant dawn

  6. with lean, hollow-bellied hounds,

    their jaws stretched open to their throats,

  7. each sinewy of foreleg and powerfully built,

    none outstripped by another, none falling short,

  8. lion-bold, mighty, dust-covered,

    watching the game with an avenger’s eye,

  9. as though, in its conspicuous coloring,

    it were wrapped in a robe from ʿAbqar.

  10. If one crossed the pale dune at a stride,

    swift though its running was, it would leave no trace.

  11. Such was its speed through the churned-up dust

    that its hindquarters almost outstripped the forepart of its chest.

  12. Were it to run for a year, it would never tire.

    Thus it caught ten beasts in the barren waste;

  13. its fang fastened nowhere but a nostril.

    What stout wild ass of a herd did it not bring down?

  14. What bull of the oryx did it not slaughter,

    drenching it in its own gushing blood?

  15. Snares for wild game, fetters for the gazelle fawn—

    I am the son of him who will intercede on the Day of Gathering,

  16. and the son of him singled out for the River Kawthar;

    the son of loftiest honors and most renowned glory,

  17. blessed in branch and pure in stock.

    We ruled humankind with a sovereignty none denied,

  18. and within it the punishment of the insolent aggressor has never ceased.

    Ask the verses of the Book about us, and you will be told.

Sol 5.6