Poetry

[Skunks]

I'm no poet, but this makes me want to be one. In the age old tradition of mixing thread-hijacking with possibly insufficient citation of somebody else's work, here's a snippit of a poem I got a kick out of:

Unceasingly I tippled the wine and took my joy,
unceasingly I sold and squandered my hoard and my patrimony
till all my family deserted me, every one of them,
and I sat alone like a lonely camel scabby with mange;
yet I saw the sons of the dust did not deny me
nor the grand ones who dwell in those fine, wide-spread tents.

So now then, you who revile me because I attend the wars
and partake in all pleasures, can you keep me alive forever?
If you can't avert from me the fate that surely awaits me
then pray leave me to hasten it on with what money I've got.

But for three things, that are the joy of a young fellow,
I assure you I wouldn't care when my deathbed visitors arrive--
First, to forestall my charming critics with a good swig
of crimson wine that foams when the water is mingled in;
second, to wheel at the call of the beleaguered a curved-shanked steed
streaking like the wolf of the thicket you've started lapping the water;
and third, to curtail the day of showers, such an admirable season,
dallying with a ripe wench under the pole-propped tent,
her anklets and her bracelets seemingly hung on the boughs
of a pliant, unriven gum-tree or a castor-shrub.

So permit me to drench my head while there's still life in it,
for I tremble at the thought of the scant draught I'll get when I'm dead
I'm a generous fellow, one that soaks himself in his lifetime;
you'll know tomorrow, when we're dead, which of us is the thirsty one.

To my eyes the grave of the niggardly who's mean with his money
is one with the wastrel's who's squandered his substance in idleness;
all you can see is a couple of heaps of dust, and on them
slabs of granite, flat stones piled shoulder to shoulder.

(from the Mu'allaqa of Tarafa, by way of "The Seven Odes: The First Chapter in Arabic Literature" compiled by A.J. Arberry [London: Allen & Unwin, 1957])