Sol 5.6

  1. When we saw al-Maghribi in the service of al-

    Mu’ayyad, like a monk withdrawn in devotion,

  2. and he wore out his life there, till he seemed the very embodiment of

    “Halt, friends—let us weep at the memory of a beloved and a campsite.”

  3. We asked him, “Is there in his shade a pasture for you,

    and at an effaced campsite anything worth weeping over?”

  4. He said, “I am the one who bestows my favor upon him—

    how many favors of mine he owes, how lavish my bounty!

  5. Whenever I take him from behind, I plug an opening in him

    with a long-hung weapon just above the ground—not unarmed.

  6. And I slake a burning thirst whose cure is hard to find

    with a sleek, huge-framed steed, the fetterer of wild beasts.

  7. Whenever it stretches through his entrails upon its rigid shaft,

    trailing haunches behind it and bearing down with its chest,

  8. all night it is like a boy’s spinning top, set whirling

    by the rapid succession of his hands upon a fastened cord.

  9. The many kinds of bowels rain freely upon it, sending down

    upon it every sort of mingled discharge.

  10. Its head emerges, after all that proud stiffness, as though it were

    a spindle-whorl amid the torrent and its scum;

  11. as though the blood of the bowels upon its shaft were

    henna’s pressed juice staining well-combed gray hair.

  12. But whenever I desire to go in to his bride,

    I savor my dalliance with her, in no haste.

  13. How many a night have I spent exultantly between him

    and a slender-waisted beauty, full where her anklets rest—

  14. charging and fleeing, advancing and retreating, all at once,

    like a massive rock the torrent has hurled down from on high.

  15. Then it courses in a single chase between a bull and a ewe,

    one after the other, without exuding water enough to need washing.”

Sol 5.6