Sol 5.6

  1. Ah, who will aid a heart wayward in its glances,

    A heart that spends the long night racked by sighs,

  2. When the Pleiades, toward night’s end, rise high,

    Their stars descending like beads of onyx?

  3. Then I fear no taunt from a spiteful foe,

    When bachelors are banished to their chambers.

  4. By my life, I have tried you and found you

    Ugly of face and vile in your excuses:

  5. You have a band of men like billy goats, and women

    Shameless and bawdy as loud-braying she-asses.

  6. I found that you never mended a ruined man’s broken bone,

    Nor slaughtered mature she-camels in the courtyards.

  7. So if God takes me into His favor, I shall not favor you,

    Nor give you my wealth amid misfortunes—

  8. A gift from God, since you withheld your wealth:

    Massive she-camels grazing the desert’s farthest reaches;

  9. Massive she-camels whose flowing milk slakes their household’s guest

    When the firelight reveals the faces of modest women.

  10. Huge, with broad resting places for their heads, their necks thick and strong;

    They seek the water’s coolness at dawn amid piercing cold.

  11. Their tug uproots the camel-thorn from its roots

    When they set out at morning, hollow-flanked and silent.

  12. When frost drives even the dog into its den, they shield themselves from it

    With broad backs, neither weak nor gaunt.

  13. Even if there is nothing there but bare, smooth tracts, by morning

    Their udders stand rounded, brimming with milk.

  14. They graze open wastes where none can reach them—

    Neither the keepers of sheep nor those of donkeys.

  15. When the provisioner has exhausted all his bag contains,

    A measure suffices: no mature she-camel and no young one need be slaughtered.

  16. Nor are they kept from the watering trough by the sight

    Of warders there with short, knotty staffs.

  17. Drawn from the far horizons of the land, they are adorned

    With long pendants upon their stout, lengthy necks.

  18. How many an enemy has beheld their young she-camels

    And had his soul torn apart with regret over them!

  19. And if the two milkers make their rounds among them, the camels meet them both

    With capacious udders, torrents pouring over their hands.

  20. When they come to water late at night, they do not disdain

    The frequented, turbid pools of the lowlands.

  21. And rain in Jumādā—as though its ravines

    And rugged uplands had been clothed in striped robes;

  22. Beneath it, the old man who had been wasting away spends the day

    Shuffling on crooked legs, his breath coming in rasps.

Sol 5.6