For the choir director, to yedyothun
A worship song of David.

I said, “I will guard my choices
from going astray at my tongue.
I will guard my mouth with a muzzle
while yet the wicked are in my sight”.

        I bound myself up in resignation, abstaining from goodness,
        so my pain was stirred up.
        Hot was my heart in my inner self, in my musing burned fire:
        I put words to my tongue,
        “Make me know, Yahweh, my ending,
        and the extent of my days - what is that?
        I would know how fleeting am I”.
        See now, hand-breadths you gave as my days
        and my world is as nothing in your sight -
        surely all inconsequential, all of Adam's monuments. · Çelah

                 Surely mere semblance, the affairs of man,
                 surely inconsequential flustering:
                 one heaps together, but does not know who will gather.

                         Yet now, what do I long for, Adonay?
                         my hope for you exists.

                 From all my rebellion, tear me away,
                 the reproach of a fool do not set against me.

        I bound myself up, never opening my mouth
        since you, it is you who devised this.
        “Lift away from upon me your affliction:
        from hostility at your hand I am spent”.
        With reproofs against straying you discipline man -
        disintegrating like the moth his fancy -
        surely inconsequential, all of Adam. · Çelah

“Hear my prayer, Yahweh
and to my plea give ear.
As for my tears, do not be aloof,
for a stranger am I with you,
a migrant like all my fathers.
Direct your gaze away from me, and I can rekindle
before I go and am no more”.