1. The soul, what is the soul but a bird that sang
With two wings, one of light and one of darkness

2. Like a bird of the garden, except that forever
It sings there the song of the bewildered wanderer

3. It continues alighting from grove to grove
And it may leave a green one for a green one

4. Neither reason unveils what it has hidden of veils
And the eye of every seer is quite blind

5. God and the soul, how much we quest for them
And seek help from the dead and the living

6. They are the hidden ones in light and in dusk
Rising above gestures and hints

7. Two mysteries that man has not probed beyond them
Unless he penetrated into doubt and exhaustion

8. Woe to this reason, a momentous riddle
How can it look with incapacity and tardiness

9. It has misfortunes and what did it gain, so it passed
Turning the glance in panic and foolishness

10. If reason descended before the soul into a body
The soul would not have tarried a secret among the entrails

11. The messengers of opinions were revealed about factions
Diverse, and about sects, many and opinions

12. I wonder, and man is transient
Is there a share of immortality for the flimsy

13. O soul, how you come near with a censer
While you are farther than revelation or the most high

14. Socrates went after you, but you did not provide him
With anything, and the son of Sinai

15. You are difficult for those who came down
From the back of Adam or came with Eve