I've known, my God, that those who implore you
have excellent action to speak for their fate,
or virtue they've helped in creating,
while I have nothing-
am hollow and shaken out-
a ravaged vine,
and in me is neither
honor or what seems right;
affection or candor of heart;
not prayer and not supplication;
not purity, faith, or simplicity;
not fairness or honest measure;
neither repentance nor service.
Let it therefore be your merciful will,
my God and the God of our fathers,
Sovereign Lord of all worlds-
to be near and have mercy upon me;
to remember me in the call of your will;
to lift the light of your face across me,
and conceive for me your graciousness-
and not repay me for all I've done
and make me an object of scorn for the base,
or take me away in the midst of my days,
or obscure your face before me;
to cleanse me of all transgression-
not to cast me away from your presence;
(...)
And then, when you withdraw me
from the life of the world we know,
bring me to peace
in the life of the world-to-come,
and call me to rise;
place me among the righteous,
with men who among the living are summoned
to life everafter;
and cleanse me
with the light of your countenance;
return me to life from the earth's depths
(...)
Loving kindness is yours
in all the good you've done me,
and until I die will do...
(...)
May you be praised in the mouth of creation
and be hallowed by words of sanctification;
be known as One by those
who seek to know you in oneness;
be extolled by those who extol you
and lifted by those
who would lift you up in song;
and may you be raised in the mouth of those who pray-
for among the gods nothing is like you,
and nothing, my Lord,
compares with what you have done.
May the words of my mouth and my heart's meditation
before you be pleasing-
my rock-
and my redemption.
Quoted after: Cole, Peter (Trans.) (2001). Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press. P.193-5.
Last updated: 2003/10/27