أحتـسي عينَك

أنت أبهى
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
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دَعِينِي أَحْتَسِي كَالْخَمْرِ عَيْنَكْوَأَقْطِفُ كَالْجَنَى الْمُحْمَرِّ زَيْنَكْ
أُوَامِي لَيْسَ تُرْوِيهِ عُيُونٌوَأُرْوَىٰ مِنْكِ إِنْ شَاهَدْتُ عَيْنَكْ
أَهَاجَ الْبَيْنُ فِي نَفْسِي ضِرَامًافَلَيْتَكِ رَأْفَةً قَرَّبْتِ بَيْنَكْ
وَلَا تَضَعِي الْفَوَاصِلَ بَيْنَ حُبِّيوَحُرْقَةِ شَوْقِ أَنْفَاسِي وَبَيْنَكْ
أَحِنُّ إِلَيْكِ، يَشْهَدُ وَجْدُ قَلْبِيوَقَدْ أَشْهَدْتُ مَا يَبْرِيهِ عَيْنَكْ
فَإِنْ جَحَدَتْ فَعَنْ مَطْلٍ، وَإِنِّيأُبَرِّئُ عَنْ جُحُودِ الْحَقِّ مَيْنَكْ
فَكَمْ مَاطَلْتِ فِي اللُّقْيَا زَمَانًافَأَيْنَ تُرَىٰ مَعَادُ الْوَصْلِ أَيْنَكْ؟
تَكَاثَرَتِ الدُّيُونُ عَلَيْكِ، هَلَّاقَضَيْتِ بِضَمَّةٍ لِلصَّدْرِ دَيْنَكْ!

I Sip Your Eye1

  1. Let me sip your eye as though it were wine,
    and pluck your beauty like reddened fruit on the vine.
  2. No springs2 can ever quench my burning thirst, no eyes;
    yet I am quenched by you when your eye meets mine.
  3. Parting has stirred a blaze within my soul:
    if only you, in pity, would bring your distance near!3
  4. And set no barriers between you and my love,
    between you and the burning longing in each breath of mine.
  5. I yearn for you, my heart's own passion testifies,
    and I have called your eye to witness what makes my heart waste and pine4.
  6. If it denies, it only means to put off paying5; and I
    acquit your lie of the charge of denying what is due.
  7. How long you have put off our meeting! Where, I wonder, is
    the promised return of union? Where are you?
  8. Your debts have piled up high: won't you repay
    your debt5 with one embrace, your breast held close to mine!

Notes

  1. ʿAyn means 'eye', but also 'spring of water' and 'the very self' of a person. The poem plays on all three, and its rhyme words are built on the same sound: ʿaynak (your eye), zaynak (your beauty), baynak (your separation, and 'between … and you'), aynak ('where are you?'), maynak (your falsehood), daynak (your debt). ↩
  2. ʿUyūn, the plural of ʿayn, means both 'springs' and 'eyes' (see note 1). No spring of water can quench his thirst, and no other eyes can either; only the sight of her eye does. ↩
  3. Bayn means separation and distance; the phrase qarrabti baynaki, 'bring your separation near', means 'close the distance between us'. In the next verse the same word returns as the preposition bayna, 'between', at the end of the line, a play on two identical words with different meanings (jinās tāmm) that English cannot reproduce. ↩
  4. Yabrīhi means 'wears it thin, wastes it', as a knife pares down a reed pen; 'it' is the heart. Her eye is called as witness to the very suffering it causes. Since ʿayn also means 'self' (note 1), the phrase can also mean 'I have called you yourself to witness'. ↩
  5. The lover builds a conceit from the language of debt and the courts. Jaḥd is a debtor's denial that he owes anything; maṭl is putting off repayment though one admits the debt; mayn is falsehood; dayn is debt. The lover is a generous creditor: he will not accuse her eye of flatly denying his claim, only of delaying payment. In the last verse the debts of promised meetings have piled up, and he names the payment that would settle them all. ↩

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