Sol 5.6

  1. Ho, son of despair—I marvel greatly

    that you should summon my malice and ask for it.

  2. How could you hope to find me weak before you,

    when its talons are savage, poised to snatch you?

  3. You sprang upon the lion, though you are a dog,

    never reckoning it might rouse itself to devour you.

  4. So take it: you have been tried by one fully able

    to shatter your backbone and tear you apart.

  5. You were obsessed with prowling after evil;

    now in your prowling you have met your doom.

  6. How fit that you should burn when, purblind, you grope

    toward my fire—and how far you are from taking a spark.

  7. When you and I unsheathe our blades,

    you will know your rival’s fresh-forged mettle from your copper.

  8. I guarantee you that clemency shall remain locked away

    until I lengthen your confinement in humiliation.

  9. Word reached me that you had faulted my poetry,

    and you have never ceased to err in your judgment.

  10. I said, “Perhaps he was drowsy,”

    but I have what will send your drowsiness flying:

  11. a satire that, if you submit to it, will go on,

    and if you buck against it, will tame your restiveness.

  12. Its opening lines waft odors from you that mimic

    the pus that bursts from you when you lie dead.

  13. Pardon me—may I never lack a forgiving brother,

    one who pardons you when you stumble and fall.

  14. You failed to recognize ebony and called it “a branch”;

    nor did I suppose it one of the horns upon your head.

  15. Now you have understood me and withdrawn from what

    you censured in me; so blunt the edge of your fury.

  16. And you are a youth who has mastered every science

    by diving into your mother’s arse and plunging deep.

  17. You have been baffled by all manner of things,

    unable to tell your fart from your sneeze.

Sol 5.6