619 “the game” (al-dast): or, punningly, “the gathering place, the divan.”
620 “spitters” (bassāqīna): the reference is unclear.
621 “cloven hoofs” (dhāt ẓilf): Jewish dietary law permits the eating of animals that have cloven hoofs (and chew the cud).
622 “No great critic… my room” (mā ʿābahā jihbidhun… ghurfatī): meaning perhaps that the occurrence of the game anywhere but inside his room would be considered by the critics so unlikely as to constitute a challenge to the readers’ credulity and hence a literary flaw.
623 “Its shape” (shakluhā): i.e., the shape of the room.
624 “Room Poems” (al-Ghurfiyyāt): the name refers to the author’s habit of writing poems on the door of the room he rented while in Paris (see above 4.19.4).
625 Saturn (Zuḥal): associated elsewhere by the author with bad luck (Volume Two, 2.9.5).
626 “repose… quiescent… cunt” (farajan… bi-sukūnin… al-farj): the author exploits the fact that faraj (“relief”) differs from farj (“vagina”) only by a single additional vowel and that sukūn means both “inactivity” and “quiescence (i.e., vowellessness)” of a consonant.
627 “Against the onslaught of grammar” (min ḍarbi Zaydin wa-ʿAmr): literally, “against the beatings of Zayd and ʿAmr,” the latter being generic names used in teaching the rules of grammar through exemplary sentences such as ḍaraba Zaydun ʿAmran (“Zayd beat ʿAmr”).
628 “People have fire without smoke” (li-l-nāsi nārun bi-lā dukhānī): perhaps meaning, “People (such as those who come and sponge off me) have matches but no tobacco,” i.e., expect me to supply the latter.
629 “chew the cud when I retire” (wa-abītu qārī): i.e., in the absence of a friend with matches, the poet is forced, at the end of the evening, to chew his tobacco.
630 “the lowest of the low” (bi-asfali sāfilīna): cf. Q Tīn 95:5 “then we cast him down as the lowest of the low.”
631 “of exalted standing” (rafīʿ al-darajāt): or, punningly, “elevated in terms of stairs.”
632 “distribute a predicate” (murāʿāt al-naẓīr): in rhetoric, applying to each member of a series a predication appropriate to it.
633 “my fire” (nārī): nār (“fire”) is feminine in gender.
634 “liar” (mayyān): here and often elsewhere in the author’s verse, references to lying and liars are to be taken in the context of his reference to “the lies of panegyric” above (4.20.44, second poem).
635 “This, the infection of your hand… has infected you not” (fa-hādhihi ʿadwā kaffikum… muṭlaqan): perhaps meaning that though the door is sick of being opened by visitors, the visitors have never grown sick of opening it.
636 “what’s been scratched through the wrinkled paint by the scraping of nails” (tanqīru aẓfārihi fī-naqri aẓfārī): the translation is tentative and depends on understanding the first aẓfār as meaning “the creased parts of a skin” (see Lane, Lexicon, s.v. ẓufr).
637 “thus saith the owl” (qālahu l-būmū): the owl is popularly considered a harbinger of bad luck.
638 “a peen” (al-shīqā): in the Arabic, “a mountaintop” or, punningly, “the head of a penis.”
639 “Sammū before entering my home” (sammū ʿalā manzilī qabla l-dukhūlī): i.e., “Invoke the name (sammū) of God (using some conventional formula),” as it is normal for a man not of the family to do before entering a house so as to warn its female inhabitants of his presence.
640 “Sammū… samm”: the author exploits the coincidental identicality of ductus of sammū (“invoke the name of God!”) (s-m-w) and summū (“poison!”) (s-m-m).
641 “I live in my room in a state of commotion” (anā sākinun fī ghurfatī mutaḥarrikun): or, punningly, “I am both ‘quiet’ (sākinun) in my room and ‘in motion’ (mutaḥarrikun)” with a further resonance of “I am a quiescent (i.e., vowelless) letter (sākinun) that is also voweled (mutaḥarrikun).”
642 “trying to screw it” (yuḥāwilu naḥtahā): naḥt means “to exhaust” as well as “to have intercourse with.”
643 “Except that beneath it run no rivers” (siwā an laysa tajrī taḥtahā l-anhārū): cf. the phrase tajrī taḥtahā l-anhārū (“beneath it run rivers”) much used in the Qurʾān to describe Paradise (e.g., Q Baqarah 2:25, 266, Āl ʿImrān 3:15, etc.).
644 “the very moons” (al-aqmārū): “moon” is a conventional trope for a beautiful person.
645 “Poems of Separation” (al-Firāqiyyāt): i.e., of separation from his wife and children when they left him in Paris and went to Istanbul.
646 “My past felicity had no like” (fa-māḍī naʿīmī lam yakun min muḍāriʿin lahu): or, punningly, “The perfect tense of my felicity had no imperfect,” i.e., “was destined not to last.”
647 “Why, what would it have harmed… to the end?” (wa-mādhā ʿalā… ṭūlahā): the author asks why the ill fortune of his earlier days should have been allowed to affect his later, happily married, life.
648 Hind… Mayyah… Daʿd: women’s names often used nonspecifically in poetry.
649 “The right-thinking man… the rightly guided” (al-rashīd… al-mahdī): or, punningly, the caliphs (Hārūn) al-Rashīd and Muḥammad al-Mahdī.
650 “do not see you in it” (wa-lastu arākumu/bi-hā): meant either literally (because the poet is in Paris while his family is in Istanbul) or in the sense that “I do not see you as worldly creatures.”
651 al-ʿĪnayn: a mountain at Uḥud near Mecca (site of a battle between the first Muslims and the idolaters of the city) from whose summit the devil is said to have proclaimed, falsely, that the Prophet Muḥammad had been killed (Qāmūs); presumably, it is the value of its association with the Prophet that makes it something to be cherished in the poet’s eyes, along with the assonance between this and the preceding and following words (al-ʿayn, al-ʿayn).
652 “You departed to be cured of what ailed you” (sāfartum li-l-barʾi mimmā nālakum): a reference to his wife’s illness and subsequent departure (see 4.18.15).
653 See 4.9.7: “for everything pulchritudinous reminds [a woman] of a handsome man” (wa-kullu ḥusnin innamā yudhakkiru bi-l-ḥasan).
654 “my twofold love for you” (ḥubbayka): perhaps meaning his love for the beloved both before separation and after it.
655 “when ‘leg is intertwined with leg… unto thy Lord that day shall be the driving’” (yawma taltaffu l-sāqu bi-l-sāq… ilā rabbika yawmaʾidhin al-masāq): i.e., the Day of Judgment (Q Qiyāmah 75:29–30; trans. Arberry, Koran, 620).