آه لحضنك

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
آهٍ لِحِضْنِكِ كَمْ أُضْنَى لَهُ كَمَدًاوَكَمْ شَكَتْ مُقْلَتِي مِنْ بُعْدِكُمْ رَمَدَا
وَكَمْ تَوَهَّمْتُ قُبْلَاتٍ تَزُخُّ نَدًىعَلَى خُدُودِي وَجِيدِي فِي جَوًى صَهَدَا
وَضَمَّةً يَطْعَنُ النَّهْدَانِ صَدْرَ فَتًىفِيهَا، تَمَنَّى وَلَوْ حُبًّا بِكِ اتَّحَدَا
وَكَمْ شَكَوْتُ إِلَى الْأَيَّامِ مِنْ ظَمَئِيوَهَلْ يُبَرِّدُ دَمْعٌ قَلْبَ مَنْ وَجَدَا؟
يَا مُنْيَةَ الرُّوحِ هَلْ لِلْوَصْلِ مِنْ سُبُلٍتَشْفِي غَلِيلاً بِجَوْفِي بَاتَ مُتَّقِدَا
حَتَّى أَذُوبَ عَلَى عَذْبِ اللَّمَى شَغَفًاوَأَسْكُبَ الرُّوحَ فِي رُوحٍ لَنَا أَبَدَا

Ah, for Your Embrace

  1. Ah, for your embrace! How often grief for it has worn me thin,
    how often have my eyes complained of soreness1 since you've gone!
  2. How often I have dreamed of kisses sprinkling dew
    on cheek and neck, amid a passion scorching as the sun2,
  3. and of an embrace in which two breasts would pierce a young man's chest3,
    who wished, if only through love, that he and you were one!
  4. How often I've complained to the days of my thirst!
    But can tears cool the heart of one whose love burns on?
  5. O my soul's desire, is there a path to union
    to heal the burning thirst4 that blazes in me all night long,
  6. so I might melt with ardour on the sweetness of your dusky lips5,
    and pour my soul into a soul that's ours, for ever one?

Notes

  1. Ramad is ophthalmia, an inflammation of the eyes; in Arabic love poetry it is the lover's eye disease, caused by weeping and sleepless nights. 'Since you've gone' is literally 'from the distance of you' in the plural (buʿdikum), a plural of respect and tenderness often used for the beloved. ↩
  2. The verse sets the imagined kisses, cool as dew (nadā), against the scorching heat (ṣahad, the fierce heat of the sun) of the lover's passion (jawā): the kisses are the relief he longs for, and the heat is his present state. ↩
  3. A classical image: the beloved's firm, rising breasts are likened to spear-points that 'pierce' the lover's chest in an embrace. The pain is a figure for overwhelming desire. ↩
  4. Ghalīl is the burning thirst of one who cannot drink his fill, a standard figure for unappeased longing; it carries on the 'thirst' of the previous verse. ↩
  5. Lamā is a dark, dusky tint of the lips, prized as a mark of beauty in classical Arabic poetry; the word often stands for the lips themselves. ↩

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