Musings on Adonis

It's always difficult to know how well a translation evokes a work's essence when you don't speak the language.

I came across another translation of the poem by Adonis that struck me most strongly when I read the collection reviewed below.

The translation I read originally:

We sleep beneath a cloth
woven from the harvests
of the night.
O night of dust....
Cymbals and alleluias
chorus in our blood.

The second translation of the same lines:

We slept in a garment
woven out of the cherries of night.
The night was specks of dust,
and the bowels
the rejoicing of blood, the rhythm of castanets
and the rays of suns submerged under the water.

They're very different. It makes me wonder how well we really communicate through language. How much of what someone understands of another's utterance is self-created?