1. O night, truly your darkness
Brings joy to people, doesn't it?

2. And love comes to you in its affliction
Complaining to you of its misery

3. O night, your vigil is long
And your concerns are many

4. So why do I bear them alone?
If only you would share them

5. O night, you blame me for staying up
While the moon delays its rising

6. I have gained from you nothing but the echo
Of a whispering soul returning to me

7. Oh me! A poured drink
That has found no friend to hear it

8. What if intimacy was me
Circling about, giving joy

9. Shall I whisper to a specter and it disobeys me?
Or even conversation denies me?

10. Woe is me! I nearly portrayed it
And my imagination conceived it

11. Except the imagery of my crazed mind
Occupies the canvas and erases it

12. Strange is the migrant who comes to me
With no lover accompanying him

13. How long is the night's vigil over
One suffering, his ribs paining him

14. Tossing in it on thorns
Of yearning, his bed paining him

15. The threads of the mattress tauten
Sickened by it and hurting him

16. Does every lover drink the cup
Of sorrows and drain it?

17. Or am I alone unskilled
In ways of union to pave them?

18. Never! By God, my fear is not
An eye following and watching me

19. My singing when I meet him
My weeping when I leave him

20. I have a body sensitive
Watered by art and healing it

21. So I planted love and grew it
My fertile soil a flower I pick

22. The wind of the acacia blew upon it
And the days would never shake it

23. My heart guards over it
Watering it with the tears I shed

24. I have patience but from preventing
A friend, and a heart I nearly dropped

25. An eye that has not seen beauty
Except the love I unfurled for it

26. An ear that has not heard sweet melody
Except to listen for it

27. And a conscience that confused me
And passion with the heart pursuing it

28. A beloved, if he asks, I would hasten
To satisfy him and obey him