Sol 5.6

  1. I see you, despite all your faults, inflicting harm upon me;

    so leave me be—and do the like to me in my own country.

  2. Will you not seek release from my venom, and guard against

    the shame of my verse upon the pages of time?

  3. Were I minded to lampoon the sun, I would say: its hornlike rays

    are long—and it once served as the lamp of Thamud;

  4. doomed to be furled and eclipsed, as though it were

    a loaf in a time of dearth, or a disk of iron.

  5. And were I minded to disparage the full moon, I would liken its face

    to a harlot’s tambourine, or the padded foot of a young riding camel.

  6. I would say it mimicked, in its coldness and pallor,

    and in its black mottling, the face of a Jew.

  7. And one in whose eyes the sun and full moon stand

    thus—whoever makes an enemy of him is no man of sense.

Sol 5.6