Shelomo Ibn Gabriol
My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth,
my throat is parched with pleading,
my heart is loud, my mind confused
with pain and continual grieving.
My sorrow swells and will not bear
sleep’s gift to my eyes:
How long will this rage and yearning
like fire inside me burn?
Who could I turn to for help,
who could I tell of my plight?
If only someone would offer me comfort,
someone have mercy, take hold of my hand,
I’d pour out my heart before him
and manage to reach but the edge of my grief—
though maybe in putting my sorrow to words
my heart’s rushing would find release.
You who seek my peace, come near—
and hear the roar of my heart like the sea.
If your heart has grown hard it will soften,
faced with the hate that faces me.
How could you call me alive,
when you know of my distress;
is it nothing to live among people
who can’t tell their right hand from left?
I’m buried, but not in a graveyard,
in the coffin of my own home.
I suffer with neither father nor mother,
indigent, young, and alone—
on my own without even a brother,
not a friend apart from my mind:
I mix my blood with my tears,
and my tears into my wine.
I’ll be consumed in my thirst
before my thirst for friendship is quenched,
as though the sky and its hosts were arrayed
between me and all that I crave.
I’m treated here as a stranger, despised—
as though I were living with ostriches,
caught between crooks and the fools
who think their hearts have grown wise.
One hands you venom to drink,
another strokes you with words
and lies in wait in his heart,
addressing you: “Please, my lord . . .”
—people whose fathers were not fit
to be dogs to my flock of sheep—
their faces have never known blushing,
unless they were painted with crimson cheeks.
They’re giants in their own eyes,
grasshoppers here in mine.
They quarrel with all my teachings and talk,
as though I were speaking Greek.
“Speak,” they carp, “as the people speak,
and we’ll know what you have to say”—
and now I’ll break them like dirt or like straw,
my tongue’s pitchfork thrust into their hay.
If your ears aren’t able to hear me,
what good could my harmonies do?
Your necks aren’t worthy of wearing
my golden crescents and jewels.
If these boors would only open their mouths
to the rain that descends from my clouds,
my essence would soon come through them
with its cinnamon scent and myrrh.
Have compassion for wisdom,
compassion for me, surrounded by neighbors like these—
people for whom the knowledge of God
is a matter of spirits and ghosts.
Therefore I mourn and wail,
and make my bed in ashes,
and bow my head like a reed and fast on
Monday and Thursday and Monday.
Why should I wait any longer
with nothing like hope in sight?
Let my eyes in the world wander,
they’ll never glimpse what I want:
Death grows daily sweeter to me,
the world’s gossip means less and less;
if my heart returns to that path,
thinking its intrigue might offer success,
whatever I do will come round,
my scheming against me revolve.
So my soul refuses its glory
for its glory brings only disgrace.
I’ll never rejoice again in the world,
my pride will find there no pleasure,
though the stars of Orion call me to come
and take up my station among them.
For the world has always been
like a yoke around my neck—
and what good does it do me to linger
by blindness and grief beset?
My soul in my death will delight
if it leads to the Lord and his rest—
I’d put an end to my life,
an end to this dwelling in flesh.
My delight’s in the day of my downfall,
my downfall the day of my greatest delight,
and I long for heart’s understanding—
the exhaustion of sinew and strength.
For a sigh settles into repose,
and my leanness leads to my meat,
and as long as I live I’ll seek out in search
of all that the elder Solomon preached:
perhaps the revealer of depths, the Lord,
will show me where wisdom lurks—
for it alone is my reward,
my portion and the worth of my work.
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