Hard as a chemist's pestle is the ass they beat.
Rinsed in his own piss, and gagging on it
[if pools of piss be all there is to drink],
his forelegs pebbled like a pox victim's hide,
he lunges at aggressive rivals, and when his bite misses,
the clash of his teeth chirps like a sparrow.
In this ass's stable, the yearlings are pregnant.
Do you know the abode in the heights of Dhu 'l-Qur
defaced by dust on the bawling winds?
Blanketing sands are what's left of the place
gone bleak and abandoned to the weather,
only an outline where their trench was
long ago, and it was a joy to the eye
that beheld the dark-eyed beauties there abiding
From The Book of Lexical Rarities of Abu Zayd al-Ansari
