Sol 5.6

  1. I lay sleepless at lightning’s glow in a high-rising cloud,

    Flashing within a cloudbank crammed to bursting—

  2. Fertilizing clouds, black and heavily laden with water,

    Gushing rain through the gaps in the cloud.

  3. A mass of black, lowering cloud

    Whose downpour pits the earth with hollows;

  4. It gathered, then leveled into a dense, flattened layer,

    Its advancing fronts veiling the channel of its torrent—

  5. Like a pitch-dark night, its recesses sunk in gloom,

    Utterly black—or like a sea alive with gleams.

  6. The rain-clouds’ smiling within it seemed

    Whenever it bared a dazzling, flashing whiteness;

  7. And through it flashed the smile of bright teeth

    Adorning the broad cheeks of fair young she-camels.

  8. Ask the poets whether they have ever swum as I swim,

    The seas of poetry, or dived as deep as I.

  9. In verse and rhyme, my tongue

    Is more skillful at diving among poems

  10. Than the fish that inhabits the open sea’s abyss,

    Swimming masterfully through its surging depths.

  11. When it darts up, its two flanks gleam,

    And it flashes white in wheeling flight and escape.

  12. Slippery creatures dodge about in the swimming-place,

    While it slips free of those that lurk there.

  13. The daughters of the water have no life

    If you take them out of their watery home.

  14. When a hand closes upon one for a moment,

    How violently it writhes beneath it!

  15. It darts and slips from every sleek, slippery hold;

    The sea-fish is black—or smooth and gleaming—

  16. Black as the water’s hue, and covered in scales

    Woven close together like supple chain mail.

  17. By your life, I keep my soul above baseness

    And veil my want with noble self-respect.

  18. I honor my father and safeguard my good name,

    And hate to be numbered among the greedy.

  19. But if you are a plate-licking miser,

    Begging from the powerful, with tangled locks,

  20. Keener for another man’s provisions than an eagle,

    And heavier than lead beside his door,

  21. The doorkeeper will weep at the sight of you and say, ‘Is there

    For me—or for this door—any deliverance from this man?’

  22. Soon he will come to regard you as his enemy,

    With the hatred of one who trades blows or grapples by the forelock.

  23. If my honor were made subject to my belly,

    Where could I escape being reviled on its account?

  24. If hunger ever makes my foot hasten toward begging,

    Then may God strike that foot with crippling affliction.

Sol 5.6