أحب عنادك

لا تفطميني عن هواك حبيبتي
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
أُحِبُّ.. أُحِبُّكِ حَتَّى عِنَادِكْوَأَفْرَحُ عِنْدَ غُلُوِّ اعْتِدَادِكْ
يَزِيدُ هَوَاكِ بِقَلْبِي إِذَا مَاصَدَدْتِ لَهِيبِي بِنَفْخِ رَمَادِكْ
وَأُعْجَبُ فِيكِ جَرَاءَةَ رَفْضٍوَقُوَّةَ صَدٍّ لِشَوْقِ زِنَادِكْ
جَعَلْتِ الْإِرَادَةَ فَوْقَ الْعَوَاطِــفِ كَبَّلْتِ بِالْعَزْمِ فَيْضَ وِدَادِكْ
وَحَطَّمْتِ عَجْزَ الشُّعُورِ بِقَلْبِــكِ شَتَّتِّ حَتَّى اشْتِيَاقَ وِسَادِكْ
وَأَنْجَزْتِ بِالرَّفْضِ رَغْمَ الْحَنِينِحُضُورَ الْإِرَادَةِ عِنْدَ مُرَادِكْ
وَمَنْ لِي بِرَبِّكِ مَنْ تَشْتَهِينِيوَتَصْبِرُ عَنِّي بِمِثْلِ جِلَادِكْ
سِوَى أَنْتِ يَا مَنْ جَعَلْتِ فُؤَادِييَظُنُّ بِأَنَّ حَيَاتِي بِزَادِكْ
فَأَعْرَضْتِ عَنِّي تُرِيدِينَ صَدِّيعَنِ الْوَصْلِ رَغْمَ اشْتِعَالِ فُؤَادِكْ
أُحِبُّكِ أَنْتِ الَّتِي أَبْتَغِيهَاأَصُبُّ شُعُورِي بِكَأْسِ عِنَادِكْ
فَلَسْتُ أَرَى الْحُبَّ إِلَّا جُمُوحًايَشُدُّ وَيُرْخِي كَمِثْلِ اشْتِدَادِكْ
سَأَصْبِرُ عَنْ كُلِّ مَا يَبْتَلِينِيبِهِ الْحُبُّ عَمْدًا سِوَى عَنْ بِعَادِكْ
وَأَزْرَعُ حُبِّي بِقَلْبِكِ حَتَّىتَحِينَ مَوَاسِمُ جَنْيِ حَصَادِكْ

ممباسا – كينيا
12/8/92م

I Love Your Stubbornness

  1. I love… I love you, even your stubbornness,
    and I rejoice when you run to excess in your pride.
  2. Your love grows greater in my heart whenever
    you fend my flame off, blowing on your ashes1.
  3. I admire in you the daring to refuse,
    the strength that checks the longing your own flint2 strikes inside.
  4. You’ve set your will above emotion; with resolve
    you’ve put in chains your affection’s flooding tide.
  5. You’ve shattered the helplessness of feeling in your heart,
    and scattered even your pillow’s3 longing.
  6. Refusing, though you yearned, you have achieved
    the presence of your will at the moment of desire.
  7. And who, by your Lord4, could find me one who craves me
    yet can bear to be without me, with a fortitude like yours,
  8. if not you, the one who made my heart believe
    my life depends on the provision5 you supply?
  9. And so you turned away from me, wanting to keep me back
    from union, though your own heart was set alight.
  10. I love you; you’re the one I seek;
    I pour my feelings in the cup of your stubbornness.
  11. For love, to me, is nothing but a bolting steed6
    that strains, then slackens, just as you draw tight.
  12. I’ll bear with patience every trial love
    sends me on purpose, all but your distance from my side.
  13. And I will sow my love within your heart until
    the seasons come to reap your harvest.

Mombasa, Kenya, 12 August 1992

Notes

  1. She answers his fire with ashes, the show of a love burnt out, and blows them at his flame as if to smother it. Yet blowing on ashes also bares the embers beneath and fans them back to life, so her very rebuff hints at the fire she hides; this is why her coldness only makes his love grow. ↩
  2. Zinād is the fire-steel, or the flint and steel, struck to make sparks. The longing is ‘the longing of your zinād’: it is her own, struck from within her, and she has the strength to keep it from catching fire. ↩
  3. The pillow stands, by metonymy (kināya), for the lonely nights of longing spent on it. She has scattered even that nightly yearning. ↩
  4. Man lī bi-…?, ‘who will bring me…?’, is a set rhetorical question meaning ‘where could I ever find…?’, expecting the answer ‘no one’. Bi-rabbiki, ‘by your Lord’, is an oath of earnest appeal. Jilād is endurance and hardihood, a word also used of steadfastness in combat. ↩
  5. Zād is provision for a journey, the food and water without which a traveller perishes. Her love has become his heart’s only sustenance for the journey of life. ↩
  6. Jumūḥ is the bolting of a horse that will not be reined in. Love is pictured as such a steed, now straining, now slackening; yashuddu wa-yurkhī, ‘pulls tight and lets go’, is also a common phrase for give-and-take. It is ‘like your tightening’ (ka-mithli shtidādiki): the beloved’s firmness in holding him off. Love, like her, gives and withholds by turns. ↩

English translation prepared by artificial intelligence and reviewed against the Arabic for accuracy of meaning and rhetoric.