I spent the night

Solomon Ibn Gabirol

Mid-11th Century

I spent the night in agitation. It seemed as if
  my eyes had been enjoined from sleeping.
The sky was like a tent with ropes
  that kept the night attached to it.
The moon alongside heaven’s Bear
  was like a beaming bride among her maidens,
or like a doe surrounded by a herd of bucks,
  all threatened by the night, a lion.
The Pleiades, a little knot of stars,
  were like the lights upon a candle stand.
Night’s head, with its white hair, was stooped
  as if it were a ninety-year-old man.
Suddenly, the heaven’s stars appeared to me
  like runners eager to deliver tidings.
Translated by Raymond P. Scheindlin.

Credits

Solomon Ibn Gabirol, “I spent the night,” from Vulture in a Cage: Poems by Solomon Ibn Gabirol, trans. Raymond P. Scheindlin (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Archipelago Books, 2016), 249. Used with permission of the publisher.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.

Engage with this Source

In this excerpt from a longer poem, a panegyric, Ibn Gabirol relates his thoughts during a sleepless night. As he lies awake, looking at the night sky, there comes to him a series of disparate images drawn from human and animal life, as though the poet were plagued by his own descriptive virtuosity.

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Related Guide

Early Medieval Poetry

9th to 12th Century

Creator Bio

Solomon Ibn Gabirol

1021–1070

Solomon ben Judah Ibn Gabirol was one of the greatest Hebrew poets of the so-called golden age of Andalusi Jewish life. Born in Córdoba in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), Ibn Gabirol fled with his family during the political upheavals of the early eleventh century. Solomon alludes to his own suffering from sickness, poverty, and other challenges. His first poems date to his teenage years in Saragossa, but he was driven out of that city, apparently for disagreements with leading Jews, including Jonah Ibn Janāḥ (b. before 980, d. after 1038). Ibn Gabirol also wrote treatises in Judeo-Arabic on ethics and Neoplatonic philosophy, the first of which was translated into Hebrew and the second into Latin, ensuring his long-standing popularity and influence. Many of his poems are part of the liturgy of Sephardic communities, and a very small number of his poems are recited in Ashkenazic communities, to this day.

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