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.

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.