Sol 6.1

  1. Restless on his bed, his food is fresh meat;

    his frame seems that of a fever-wasted man.

  2. With fleshless knuckles, ravenous, a brother to the hunt,

    so, dazed, he sleeps only in fleeting dozes.

  3. Until, when she was certain she had no company

    except low cries like interpreters' voices,

  4. she made her way, her flank-muscles drawn tight,

    to the watering places with the long-necked leaders.

  5. And she sniffed the air, fearing watching eyes: for her

    lay an ill-omened night from him at al-Qusaybah.

  6. Until, when the deep pools submerged her shanks,

    and she embraced the drowsing frogs,

  7. and assailed it with her jaws, she was swayed

    by a chill mingling within the hollows of throats.

  8. Her ears in the water were almost shattered

    by white mouth-bubbles, like rings.

  9. He had shifted aside until he said, "She has done it!"

    And the flanks of the full-grown, thirsty beasts became clearly visible.

  10. Then he took aim with a stout-ridged shaft, driven on

    by the vigor of a man not denied success at neck-shots.

  11. It passed beneath her jaws, and she had

    a guardian until an inescapable, decreed fate.

  12. She plunged into the blackness of night, forced onward

    by a downpour of all-out, panic-stricken running.

  13. So the archer of Banu al-Hirman returned, anguished,

    walking with two nocks from a bare, shattered bow.

  14. So he remained, grieving that he had missed her,

    in a house of hunger, low-roofed and ruined.

  15. Mahkan is the worst of all the studs among men,

    and Umm al-Farazim is the worst of mothers.

  16. Two studs—no child has ever met a worse pair

    among those who stir between India and the Roman lands.

Sol 6.1