I spent the night

Mid-11th Century

About This Entry

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.

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.

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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.