1. Do you know, my life, if the raging south winds
Depart with my camel litters or the backs of howdahs?

2. I rose like a star in the farthest east,
Blazing, until I reached the farthest west.

3. Alone, the empty deserts alarmed me, so I donned
The masks of death in the garb of the lurking places.

4. I have no neighbor except one girded with a drawn sword,
No abode except the platforms of the litters.

5. I have no intimacy except to smile an hour
At the lips of yearning in the faces of the seekers.

6. And a night when I say it has perished and vanished,
It reveals a promise from imagining, lying.

7. I tried to enfold the darkness in black trails
To embrace hopes white as mirages.

8. So I tore open the bosom of night for the figure of an Atlas,
Who looked out laughing with bright white teeth.

9. I saw him wearing pieces of dawn dusky grey
Looking for a star that blazed penetratingly.

10. And the ambitious, aspiring, splendidly decked out hunter
Reaching with his reins to the sky's horizon.

11. Blocking the breath of the wind from every direction,
Crowding the night with his shooting stars.

12. Serene on the back of the desert as if, throughout the nights,
He ponders consequences and results.

13. The clouds soil him with black turbans
That flash with the lightning's red braids.

14. I called to him and he was a silent mute,
So the night of journeying told me of wonders.

15. It said, Oh how often I was a refuge for a killer
And dwelling for a repentant sinner!

16. How many a sparkling one and fading one passed me by
And said, "In my shadow, rider and ridden!"

17. The winds' blows slapped my cheeks
And the green seas jostled my sands.

18. Until the hand of fate carried them off
And the winds of destiny and calamity blew them away.

19. So my fluttering was nothing but the shivering of ribs
And my groaning only the cry of a wailing mourner.

20. And my tears streaming down did not dim my eyes,
Rather, I shed my tears at parting from friends.

21. So how long will I remain while a friend departs
Whom I bid farewell, not to return?

22. And how long will I pasture the stars awake
Rising at night and setting by day?

23. So, my Lord, have mercy on the plea of a beseeching suppliant
Who stretches his tranquility to Your favors.

24. Make me hear in his preaching every lesson
That the tongue of experience translates from him.

25. He prayed for what made me weep and delighted in what was arduous.
He was, in the days of night journeying, the best companion.

26. I said, turning away from him for a while,
"Peace, for we are both dweller and traveler."