Sol 5.6

  1. I looked upon the loaf, and it restored my spirit,

    there with a stone-hearted man who tames, yet cannot be tamed.

  2. A fellow who never ceases rising to deeds of shame,

    yet toward the heights of honor never rises.

  3. His nature, all his days, is a clenched fist;

    his whole being is, by nature, opening and closing.

  4. Other people’s baseness has length but no breadth;

    his baseness, though, has both length and breadth.

  5. Every part of him, through baseness, has turned against the rest,

    so one part of him flees another.

  6. The ranks decline him, though he is in the accusative—worn with toil;

    and grammatical agents make him accusative, though he is genitive—and abased.

  7. One day, at his house, he showed me a loaf

    defended by an army that could not be dispersed.

  8. So I kissed the loaf and spoke a kindly word;

    for thanking the hoped-for benefactor is a duty.

  9. But when I opened my mouth wide over it,

    to bite it, while a pang gnawed at my entrails,

  10. suddenly a man spoke plainly, without euphemism:

    “Will you not be content to kiss—or else turn away?”

  11. I said, “And how does one obtain bread among you?”

    He said, “Its way is by sale or loan.”

  12. I will not say who he is—recognize him from this:

    is there upon the earth, besides the earth itself, another earth?

  13. An ancient stain has spread through his honor,

    and an effeminacy no hard riding can drive away.

  14. His judgment never bends toward good,

    nor can his guile in evil be unraveled.

  15. You see him: everything in him is adulterated,

    but his baseness, ever since he was, is pure.

  16. I churned him, but he offered no butter to halt my churning;

    and can the churning of water ever give you butter?

  17. We showed him to the physician, who felt his pulse;

    then he swore that your generosity had no pulse in him.

Sol 5.6