1. A voice in the gloom deprived me of sleep
Like the roar of a waterfall

2. It screams while the wind echoes back
In the sky's ear and the hills

3. O night, pause a moment before me
See the wilds and the nights I saw

4. I am the reveler, I am the weeping one
I am the naked one, I am the clad one

5. I am the wine flask and the firmness
I am the walker, I am the perceiver

6. I took off a garment my hand did not choose
And I fancied myself in the valley without pants

7. I emptied myself, I broke free of my chains
And my essence escaped from the mire

8. I still exaggerate my shackles
And I still hope for the impossible

9. So I do not weep for the estrangement
From a neighbor or household

10. For my neighbors may return
And my estrangement from myself remains

11. I knew everyone coming and going in the day
But I did not know my own state

12. The plains and hills were hidden from me
By the gloom and the sea of horrors

13. But my hopes were not hidden from me
Nor my faults or merits

14. Neither my weakness nor determination
Nor my ugliness nor beauty

15. So how I flee from my soul
When there is no escape from myself

16. So I said "Who is this?" My friend said
"A whisperer raving in his confusion

17. Who takes refuge in the bushes by day
As if he were part of the bushes

18. And at night he has a loud scream
As if he and the night were in conflict

19. As if the night binds him
With shackles and chains

20. And lashes his naked body
With the harsh unjust whip"

21. Whenever someone saw him, they saw him
Straining his eyes toward the heights

22. As if he were awaiting an ascending caravan
Or a descending one - nothing else

23. As if he feared for the crescent moon
And the rest of the comets from fading

24. The voice cried out "What I hope for in myself
And what I fear,

25. However vast the horizon expands
My soul is the vaster horizon"

26. It was not the night's majesty that amazed me
But rather my own majesty

27. Nor was it the comets' beauty that confused me
But rather my own beauty

28. If I long for union
My longing is for my imagination

29. I clothed myself in the morn and night
In my intimacy and grief

30. So the gloom did not increase my fear
Nor did the dawn increase my safety

31. I will shun all humankind
From sultans to slaves

32. The learned, the wealthy
Both newcomer and emigrant and settler

33. Both present and past and future
Are equal in my right fist beyond dispute

34. The ignorant fool meets
The scholar in my palm

35. Whoever had a friend
And whoever was without a friend

36. And in my left hand are visions of wishes
And forms of certainty and lostness

37. And all that a sane or insane person
Has of pleasure or killing pain

38. And everything else of conditions and states
And whatever someone said to me

39. And night was about to spur on
Its steeds, so silence crept into the valley

40. As if death were overcoming it
I walked as dawn guided me searching

41. In the forest, slopes and hills
I found only a motionless corpse

42. Lying near the waterfall
Nothing in his left hand

43. And nothing in his right but mud