Sol 6.1

  1. I set out at dawn, while morning's rising-place lies bare,

    With a keen-hearted mount, sharp of hearing,

  2. With pointed fangs and dark tear-ducts,

    As though they had been steeped in potent poison.

  3. It shoots from the hide of dusky darkness,

    Taking the night stars' course toward the broad way,

  4. Like a bow, or an arrow, in its swiftness.

    I have seen no lightning but it that does not flash,

  5. Nor have I seen a bird upon four legs.

    Chalk-white, black-marked, with spear-like forelegs,

  6. It brings down wild beasts, like a pied crow,

    And gazes with a startled creature's two eyes.

  7. Such is its abundant intelligence that it almost

    Answers its master's thought, though it has not been called.

  8. It pours down like a torrent coursing through a gully,

    And rises high like flashing lightning.

  9. What a guest's feast, what an adornment to a gathering!

    Tucked of flank and broad of rib,

  10. Well-proportioned in build, towering and broad-chested,

    A fetter for wild asses, death to grazing gazelles,

  11. Aid to the wronged, wealth for the destitute.

    If it charged on the heels of a raging wind,

  12. It would leave her exhausted before she even sped up.

    Possessing a hard hoof and a docile head,

  13. Thick through its seven neck vertebrae, unshod on all four.

    With it I hunt wild beasts, the beasts of the barren waste,

  14. As though, because of it, they were in a lion-haunted valley.

    And atop it I meet enemies in the battle-gathering.

  15. It is safety's safeguard on the day of terror,

    And guarantees provisions for companions and the hungry,

  16. Possessing whole stores of goodness, not mere flashes.

    And a companion alongside it, never yet rusted,

  17. Stout-hearted—what a stout-hearted companion!

    Its two sides quiver, but not from fear.

  18. Whenever it comes to iron's waters, it plunges in,

    As sandgrouse come to the head of a brimming pool.

  19. Like a glowing ember: whenever you draw it, it cuts,

    As though you had brought it close to wax.

  20. What flanks of darkness has it not broken through?

    And in what drought-stricken year has it not brought relief?

  21. Through it every close friend has grazed amid lush pasture.

    And it lodged within a noble horseman,

  22. And moved through the heart of dark battle-dust,

    Like passion in the entrails of an infatuated lover.

  23. Safety for the fearful, terror for the formidable.

    Before it, the bleary eyes of coats of mail turn aside.

  24. If it were allowed to speak clearly to a listener,

    It would tell of ʿAd and the people of Tubbaʿ,

  25. And the day the little sun was brought back for Joshua:

    A truthful man's account, not a false swearer's oath.

  26. Some people censured my chastity and my piety,

    And my anguish—though it was no time for anguish.

  27. Yet when covetousness arrives,

    I am no beggar, nor servile,

  28. Nor a base coward—no, nor a weakling.

    They resented nothing but my reckless pride,

  29. And a station surpassing every station,

    And every excellent, newly invented meaning,

  30. In verses with unrhymed first halves or matching half-line rhymes,

    Lovelier than the calls of perched doves,

  31. Singing in rhyme through the world, though it does not coo.

    And my chief sin, in the eyes of those factions,

  32. Is love for ʿAtiq and the large-bellied, bare-templed one,

    And my aversion to obscene abuse.

  33. And that is an innovation to the people of innovations,

    Not anger born of quenched thirst or fullness.

  34. The censurer of my words will learn, should he be mourned,

    Whether truth is with him, or truth is with me,

  35. And which of us had an unwholesome pasture,

    On a day when shedding tears will be no use,

  36. And every flank falls to its place of death.

    This world is nothing but a road of deceptions,

  37. And its vicissitudes are proof for the claimant.

Sol 6.1