so I write, and read, for myself (there’s no other option)-/am my own judge: my work is safe with me./ Yet I’ve often asked myself what’s the point of such labor-/ will the Sarmatians or Getae read my work?
-Tristia, IV, 1
…I blush/ to admit it, I’ve even composed in the Getic language,/ bending barbarian patois to our verse:/ among the uncultured natives I’m getting a reputation/ as a poet. Congratulate me. I’ve made a hit.
-Black Sea Letters, IV, 13
Why did Ovid doubt that Scythians and Goths would read his work? In one of his letters he says that his tribute to Caesar was a hit in the Getic language so he must have been more than proficient in it, and he apparently thought himself equally so in Sarmatian. Unwritten dialects spoken in out of the way places are always worth learning, no, maybe not in order to write original verse, but certainly to transcribe, translate, and maybe declaim someone else’s…such as the poem the drover Saeed abd al-Faraj recited at our fire one night.
Her waist isn't flabby but her hips are wide,
Yet just one hand can gird her buttocks riding high.
By the life of the Prophet! On a feast day!
Her gown shines brighter than the glow of dawn.
It had us all in stitches, Kababish and khawaja alike, when Saeed later let us in on his secret…the “her” in his poem was a naaqa, a camel mare, not a bint, a Kordofani maid.