أما آن؟

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
أَمَا آنَ يَهْفُو إِلَيَّ بِعَادُكْوَيَقْتَصَّ مِنْكِ الْحَنِينَ فُؤَادُكْ
وَتَسْهَرَ مِثْلِي عُيُونُكِ شَوْقًاوَيَشْعُرَ وَجْدَ سُهَادِي سُهَادُكْ
أَمَا كَانَ لِلْوَرْدِ فِي وَجْنَتَيْكِوَمِيضٌ، أَمَا كَانَ هَمِّي ارْتِيَادُكْ
إِذَا أَكْمَلَ الشَّوْطَ رَحْلِيَ رَكْضًايُسَلِّمُ لِي فِي الْمَسِيرِ عِنَادُكْ
مَتَى تَسْبِقِينَ الرَّكَائِبَ حُبًّايَشُدُّ الْوَرِيدَ، وَيَرْضَى اعْتِيَادُكْ

Is It Not Time?1

  1. Is it not time1 your very distance yearned towards me,
    and your own heart made you pay the price of longing, in kind2,
  2. and your eyes, like mine, lay wakeful out of longing,
    and your sleeplessness could feel the ache of mine?
  3. Was there not once a gleam in the rose of your cheeks?
    Was not my one concern to seek you out3?
  4. When my mount has run the whole course at a gallop,
    your stubbornness will yield to me4 at the end of the line.
  5. When will you outrun the caravans5, with a love
    that grips the vein, and your old habit be resigned?

Notes

  1. A-mā āna, ‘has the time not come?’, is a question of reproach and longing. It recalls the Qurʾanic question a-lam yaʾni li-lladhīna āmanū, ‘Has the time not come for those who believe…?’ (Qurʾan 57:16), and the poem asks it of the beloved again and again. ↩
  2. Two paradoxes. Her ‘distance’ (biʿād) is made to yearn towards him, as though separation itself should long for an end. Then yaqtaṣṣa, from qiṣāṣ, retaliation in kind: he asks that her own heart take revenge on her for him, making her suffer the same longing she has made him suffer. The next verse spells out that justice: her eyes sleepless like his. ↩
  3. Both questions are rhetorical reproaches. Irtiyād is what a scout (rāʾid) does when he goes out in search of pasture and water: seeking her out was the whole object of his journeying. ↩
  4. Yusallimu lī means ‘yields, surrenders to me’: at the end of the road, his perseverance will wear down her resistance. ↩
  5. Rakāʾib are riding camels, the caravan of travellers. To ‘outrun the caravans’ is to hasten to the lover ahead of every traveller, instead of leaving him to make the whole journey. Al-warīd is the jugular vein, the vein of life; a love that grips it is felt in the very pulse. The last phrase asks that her habit of holding back should come, in time, to consent to this love. ↩

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