Take up wailing

Isaac Ibn Ezra (attrib.)

Before 1140

Take up wailing over every mountain, and I’ll take it up over the wilderness pastures.

And I’ll make a bitter lament, like jackals wailing over every passageway.

I’ll speak with constricted breath, and great anguish and a broken heart,

for my friend, who fell in the company of bad men, and became their friend.

He abandoned the one who had hoped for and aspired to his friendship.

He enraged him with his deeds, until he became angry and furious.

He made him an object of scorn, and humiliated him as low as he had been high.

He shamed him with every word, derided him with every utterance.

While I was walking, the slave woman of a treasurer encountered me,

She called out to me, with a laugh, “Have you heard what he said,

this old man of yours, who lived in the loft, the gallery,

whose face and countenance are dark like black bread?

We saw him with his boy, with his lips pressed together against the boy’s mouth,

when his mouth was upon his mouth, he looked like a raven with a mouse in its mouth!”

Translated by Gabriel Wasserman.

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

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