There I see you, Night, and you see me. You are a father to me, though I fear you, and in my dreams I am your son. The veils of obscurity are removed from between us and the veils of doubt and conjecture are torn from our faces. You reveal to me your secret intentions, and I tell you plainly my hopes and desires. At last your terrors are transformed into a song sweeter than the whispers of flowers. My fears become a friendship more dear than the peace of the thrush. You bear me up to you and seat me upon your shoulders. You teach my eyes to see and my ears to hear and my lips to speak. You teach my heart to love that which men do not love and to hate that which men do not hate. Then you touch my thoughts with your fingertips, and my thoughts pour out like a river rushing and singing as it washes away the withered grass. Then you kiss my spirit with your lips, and my spirit reels like a spark that sets aflame idols of dry wood.

I was your companion, Night, until I became like you. I was your friend until my desires mixed with yours. I loved you until my being was transformed into a microcosm of your being. In my darkened soul stars shone, stars strewn in the evening by ecstasy, but the apprehensions of morning swept them away. Sometimes in my watchful heart a moon hurries across a sky, a sky sometimes obscured by clouds and sometimes crowded with the caravans of dreams. In my watchful spirit the shapes of silence reveal lovers’ thoughts and its caves echo with the prayers of monks. There is a veil of magic wrapped about my head. The death-rattle of the dying tears at it, then the songs of the love-poets mend it again.

Night, I am like you. Will men think I am boasting when I liken myself to you? In their boasting they compare themselves to fire.

I am like you, for we are both accused of being what we are not.

I am like you in my desires and my dreams and my being and my character.

I am like you, though the evening does not crown me with golden clouds.

I am like you, though the morn does not stud my robes with the rosy light.

I am like you, though I am not girded with the Milky Way.

I am night—intimate, joyous, tranquil, troubled. My darkness has no beginning and my depths no end. When the spirits arise, splendid in the light of their joys, my spirit comes frozen in the shadows of its pain.

Night, I am like you. My morn will not come until my time has ended.

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