Sol 5.6

  1. Indeed, the Damascene is a slave to his own need,

    and a slave to whomever he hopes will fulfill it.

  2. He bores his friends with talk of his wife

    every day, and with his nocturnal expeditions,

  3. until, once he has satisfied his desire

    in some affair, he vanishes in the dust-cloud he raises,

  4. then heads either toward his earthenware bowl,

    hurrying, or toward his bottle.

  5. There he gives himself over to meat and tharid, and to

    whatever spittle the cup has spat out.

  6. By now he has grown stubborn in forsaking his friends—

    may God never free him from his obstinacy!

  7. Then he gives no thought to a close friend amid

    Fortune’s straits or its relief.

  8. Blessed be God—how frivolous he is

    when he vies so stubbornly in boorishness!

  9. For the heart has perceived in his baseness

    what the eye has seen in his repulsive ugliness.

  10. Then he retires to his lawful wife,

    as a rooster retires to his hen:

  11. a tireless cleaver of teak, he spends the whole night

    with his saw in the cleft of his teak plank.

  12. Then he sets about weaving verse, though

    the weaving of poetry is none of his craft.

Sol 5.6