امتزاج المشاعر

عبير الأبد
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
لَا أُحَابِي بَيْنَ حُبِّيلَكَ أَوْ حُبِّي لِنَفْسِي
هَكَذَا عَلَّمَنِي الْــحُبُّ الَّذِي اسْتَوْلَى بِحِسِّي
هَكَذَا مِنْ دُونِ كُلِّ الْــخَلْقِ مِنْ جَانٍّ وَإِنْسِ
فَأَنَا الْعَاشِقُ وَحْدِيوَالْهَوَى ضَعْفِي وَبَأْسِي
إِنَّمَا الْحُبُّ حُسَامِيوَإِذَا شِئْتُ فَتُرْسِي
إِنَّمَا الْحُبُّ سَنَاءٌنُورُهُ يَغْمُرُ حِسِّي
لَا أُبَالِي كُنْتُ فِي الْحَانَاتِ أَوْ مِحْرَابِ قُدْسِ
فَفُجُورِي مِثْلُ تَقْوَايَ وَطُهْرِي مِثْلُ رِجْسِي
وَاكْتِئَابِي بِهُمُومِيكَارْتِشَافِي نَخْبَ كَأْسِ
تَسْتَوِي الْأَضْدَادُ عِنْدِيفَكَمَا الْمَأْتَمِ عُرْسِي
وَاللَّيَالِي مُشْرِقَاتٌوَنَهَارِي دُونَ شَمْسِ
صِرْتُ لَا أُدْرِكُ فَرْقاًبَيْنَ آمَالِي وَيَأْسِي
بَيْنَ صَمْتِي وَأَنِينِيوَاغْتِرَابِي ثُمَّ أُنْسِي
فَشُكُوكِي كَيَقِينِيفِيكَ يَا جُرْحِي الْمُؤَسِّي
وَاشْتِيَاقِي كَسُلُوِّيمِنْكَ مِنْ بَعْدِ التَّأَسِّي
وَانْتِكَاسَاتِي كَنَصْرِيوَانْطِلَاقَاتِي كَحَبْسِي
وَانْتِشَائِي كَامْتِعَاضِيوَابْتِسَامِي مِثْلُ عَبْسِي
وَلِقَائِي بِكَ أَحْلَىمِنْهُ أَنْ أَخْلُو لِنَفْسِي
وَاسْتِمَاعِي مِنْكِ هَمْساًمِثْلُ إِصْغَائِي لِهَمْسِي
كِدْتُ إِنْ سُوئِلْتُ مَنْ تَهْــوَى يَكُونُ الرَّدُّ نَفْسِي

مقديشو — 5/11/1989م

Mingled Feelings

  1. Between my love for you and love
    for my own self, I show no preference.
  2. This is what love has taught me,
    the love that seized on every sense;
  3. so it taught me, me alone
    of all creation, jinn and human race.
  4. So I alone am the lover,
    and passion is my weakness and my force.
  5. Love is nothing but my sword,
    and, when I wish, my shield.
  6. Love is nothing but a radiance
    whose light floods every sense.
  7. I do not care if I'm in taverns
    or at the prayer niche1 of a holy place.
  8. My wickedness is like my piety,
    my purity like my uncleanness.
  9. And my dejection at my cares
    is like sipping a toast from a glass.
  10. Opposites are all the same to me:
    my wedding is like a mourners' house.
  11. The nights are full of light,
    and my day is sunless.
  12. I can no longer tell the difference
    between my hopes and my hopelessness,
  13. between my silence and my moaning,
    my estrangement and my closeness.
  14. My doubts are like my certainty
    in you, my wound that soothes and heals me2!
  15. My longing's like forgetting you3
    after I have taken solace.
  16. My setbacks are like my victory,
    my breaking free is like my arrest.
  17. My elation is like my vexation,
    my smile is like my frowning face.
  18. Sweeter than being with you
    is being alone with myself;
  19. to hear a whisper from you4
    is like listening to my own whispers.
  20. If I were asked whom I love,
    I'd very nearly answer: “Myself.”5

Mogadishu, 5 November 1989

Notes

  1. The miḥrāb is the niche in a mosque that marks the direction of prayer, and so stands for worship and devotion; the tavern stands for dissipation. Setting the two side by side, as the following verses do with piety and wickedness, purity and defilement, is a device of Arabic love poetry, and of Sufi poetry in particular, to show a love so total that ordinary distinctions no longer apply. ↩
  2. Al-muʾassī is 'the one who consoles and tends': the beloved is addressed as a wound that is itself the comfort and the cure, another pair of opposites held together. The word shares its root with al-taʾassī, 'taking solace', at the end of the next verse (jinās). ↩
  3. Sulūw is the lover's forgetting, the cooling of passion that comes with consolation; taʾassī is the act of consoling oneself by accepting what cannot be changed. Even when he is consoled and 'forgets', his longing is unchanged: forgetting and longing are one and the same. ↩
  4. Here the addressee, masculine until now (as in bika, 'with you', in the previous verse), becomes feminine: minki, 'from you', addressed to a woman. The shift is deliberate. Classical Arabic love poetry often speaks of the beloved in the masculine, as a convention of discretion; at this moment of closest intimacy the mask drops. ↩
  5. The closing verse brings the poem's union of opposites to its climax: lover and beloved have become one. It recalls the famous line attributed to the Sufi al-Ḥallāj, 'I am the one I love, and the one I love is I'. Nafsī means both 'myself' and 'my soul', so the answer can also be heard as 'my own soul'. The 'very nearly' (kidtu) holds back from saying it outright. ↩

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