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وَعَدَتْنِي … نَعَمْ أَنَا الْمَوْعُودُ!لَيْتَهَا إِنْ وَفَتْ .. بِوَصْلٍ تَجُودُ!
فَفُؤَادِي أَمَضَّهُ الْوَجْدُ.. وَاشْتَطَّخَيَالِي.. وَالْوَهْمُ فِيهَا شَرِيدُ
هَلْ تُرَانِي .. أَعُودُ أَلْثِمُ ثَغْرًا؟حَنَّ لِلَّثْمِ وَالشِّفَاهُ شُهُودُ
هَلْ تُرَى الْوَرْدُ مُفْعَمٌ بِحَنِينٍتَرْجَمَتْهُ بِالِاحْمِرَارِ الْخُدُودُ؟
هَلْ تُرَى شَعْرُهَا يَظَلُّ حَرِيرًاوَالْحَبِيبُ الَّذِي تُحِبُّ بَعِيدُ؟
وَخِصَالٌ بِكَتْفِهَا تَتَدَلَّىبِجَمَالٍ كَأَنَّهَا الْعُنْقُودُ
كَيْفَ يَبْدُو مِنْ غَيْرِ أَطْرَافِ كَفٍّمَشَطَتْهُ وَلَمْ تَعُقْهَا سُدُودُ
هَلْ تُرَى اشْتَاقَتِ الضُّلُوعُ لِضَمِّي؟أَمْ إِلَى اللَّثْمِ قَدْ تَوَاجَدَ جِيدُ؟
أَيْنَ ذَاكَ الصَّدْرُ الْمَلِيءُ حَيَاةً؟رَحَّبَتْ بِي عَلَى رُبَاهُ النُّهُودُ
أَيْنَ حِضْنٌ إِذَا تَعِبْتُ احْتَوَانِيحَانِيًا وَهْوَ بِالْأَسَى مَكْدُودُ
أَيْنَ مِنِّي الْخَصْرُ الْمُثِيرُ لِوَجْدِيمَا سِوَى خِفَّةِ الْكُفُوفِ يُرِيدُ
ثُمَّ لَثْمًا تَبُوحُ فِيهِ شِفَاهِيعَنْ لَهِيبِ الْأَشْوَاقِ وَهْيَ تَرُودُ
أَيْنَ أَيْنَ الَّذِي تَعَوَّدْتُ دَهْرًا؟خِلْتُ أَنَّا عَنْ دَرْبِهِ لَا نَحِيدُ
تِلْكَ أَيَّامُنَا الْعِذَابُ تَقَضَّتْلَيْتَهَا مِثْلَمَا نُرِيدُ تَعُودُ!

The One She Promised

  1. She promised me… yes, I’m the promised one1!
    If only she’d keep faith… and grant me union’s grace!
  2. For passion stings my heart to the quick… my imagination
    has run past every bound… my fancy, lost in her, has strayed.
  3. Shall I, I wonder… come back to kiss a mouth
    that yearned for kisses, as the lips themselves betrayed?
  4. Do you suppose the rose is brimming with a longing
    that the cheeks translate2 into a crimson shade?
  5. Do you suppose her hair stays silken
    while the one she loves is far away,
  6. and the locks that tumble down her shoulder,
    as lovely as a cluster of grapes3?
  7. How does it look, without the fingertips of a hand
    that combed it, and that no barrier ever stayed?
  8. Do you suppose her ribs have longed for my embrace?
    Or has a neck, for kisses, swooned in rapture4?
  9. Where is that bosom, brimming full of life,
    on whose rising hills her breasts would welcome me to stay?
  10. Where is the embrace that, when I was weary, held me
    tenderly, though sorrow had left it worn and frayed?
  11. Where now for me is the waist that stirred my passion,
    that wanted nothing but the light touch of hands,
  12. and then a kiss, in which my lips, roaming,
    would lay bare the flame of all their longing?
  13. Where, where is all that I’d grown used to for so long?
    I thought that we would never swerve from its way.
  14. Those sweet days5 of ours have ebbed away;
    if only they’d come back, the way we wish!

Notes

  1. Al-mawʿūd is ‘the one to whom a promise was made’. He announces it with a flourish, as though it were a title of honour, but the second half of the verse shows that a promise is all he has: whether she will keep it, and grant him union, is left to ‘if only’. ↩
  2. The rose stands for the cheek, as often in Arabic love poetry. The verb tarjama, ‘to translate’, makes the blush a translation: the cheeks put into the visible language of red a yearning that could not otherwise be spoken. ↩
  3. The ʿunqūd is a cluster of grapes. Dark, heavy locks hanging in curls are likened to bunches of black grapes, a comparison found in classical description of hair. ↩
  4. Tawājada means to be overcome by wajd, the ecstatic, overwhelming passion of the lover, a word that also belongs to the vocabulary of Sufi rapture. Here the neck itself is imagined swooning with desire for kisses. ↩
  5. Al-ʿidhāb, ‘the sweet ones’, is the plural of ʿadhb, ‘sweet’, as of fresh water. Unvowelled, the same letters read al-ʿadhāb, ‘torment’. The primary sense is ‘those sweet days of ours’, but the spelling lets the other word show through: sweet days that are over become a torment to remember. ↩

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