My soul is ready for the journey,
coat drawn close and girdled as was the command.
For the carriage will not wait or stay long
in this station
before the long and difficult ascent
that may finally lead to the fearsome mountain,
onto the strange empty ridge where the Nameless is waiting,
or perhaps to another valley, different from this one.

My soul is ready for the journey
but it does not know the way
for it leads through soul's own bare territory
and the day journeys are hidden behind the shadows of night.

My soul is ready for the journey
but yet it is afraid to go.
Could it not rest for a while
under the pavilion of your soul?
Does it not belong to the Possible
that it were allowed a moment of oblivion there?
Or is it really your soul that has asked for permission
to sit at the hearth whose fire does not warm me?
And is it not that when one finds rest for a while
and can loosen the girdle,
the other must keep guard and cannot have a share
of the shade and refreshment that it unknowingly offers?

My soul is ready for the journey
but where it is, it is alone,
and still it is night, the Moon lures, but does not show
under what tent's cloth the shadows seem to move
and whose shadows they are.
Are they the others, the foreign travellers?
And if morning is still far away.

Is this reddish glow
from the campfire of the Nameless
or is the decampment day already hoisting the flag of light
and the pavilion taken down
before I can even see you face to face?
And where I am lying sleeplessly
it is only an image of your body,
for your soul is travelling too and must not stop.

No, my soul is ready for the journey
and already the changing Moon
burns up in the rising glow of the Day.

And you are nowhere but far,
no, you are nowhere but far
and I am far from you.
And far from me travels my soul.