Sol 6.1

  1. ʿAbd Qays saw a flicker, raised aloft by

    a fire-seeker's two hands; he waved it, then quenched it.

  2. Look again, O ʿAbd Qays—for perhaps

    the fire has lit up for you the tethered donkey:

  3. the donkey of Kulaybites, who never entered it in

    a race, nor were they found scouting on horseback.

  4. Perhaps the kindler will rekindle the fire; then seek

    with your two eyes the fire of the man warming himself, where he kindled it.

  5. For they did not strive on the day of al-Nisār, nor did

    their women visit an armored warrior of theirs laid on a pillow.

  6. A Kulaybite woman—God did not make her face

    noble, nor did the birds foretell better fortune for her.

  7. How, then, though I have gouged out your eyes, do you seek

    defiance of a snake's two fangs, which have grown dusky?

  8. It is one of the deaf serpents: a single dose of its saliva suffices;

    and whenever it returns, it is still more praiseworthy.

  9. You see, where it touches the earth as it slithers,

    fissures gaping through the hard-packed mounds.

  10. If you have faulted the fire of Ibn al-Marāgha, it is indeed

    the basest of fires, in those warming at it and in its hearth.

  11. When they kindle it with kindling scraps, it does not illuminate

    a chief, nor a source of hospitality among those halting their camels.

  12. But polecats warm themselves beside it,

    lining up propped stone slabs for the pen:

  13. hedgehogs shuffling behind their donkey foals,

    as ʿAtiyya had accustomed them to do,

  14. when the Kulaybite's mother wrapped around him

    a black shank, like an ostrich's shin.

Sol 6.1