ترانيم المنفى

Hymns of Exile

1. Oh for a tremor, green¹, that pulses in the land we guard,
   to wake the heart’s pulse from the doze of blindness where it lay!
2. Oh for a destiny that runs upon the wings of hope,
   and kindles on the far horizon’s edge a smile ablaze!
3. Oh for a homeland journeying by night² upon my exile’s wound,
   to paint a dawn inside my eyes, a balm to ease the pain!
4. Then I would weave a story out of our first, virgin longings,
   and pour into my notebook passion, as the inspiration came.
5. My pain sets the question bursting open in my breast,
   and plants within my eyes a secret, talisman-sealed³ and strange.
6. A beloved’s phantom⁴ scattered in the mirror’s glass,
   and so my being lost in lands of exile was ordained.
7. I search between the soul and heart for love,
   and draw a shattered heart across the notebook’s page.
8. O you whom we bear upon our ribs⁵,
   you’ve poured across the days a grief that pitched its tent to stay.
9. You poured grief through my life; and my throbbing heart unsheathed
   from silence, as a sword is drawn, a song that rang out far away.
10. The far expanse and I are two wounds bleeding exile,
    and in our entrails the language of the blood has made its dwelling-place.
11. I distil out of my tears the wine of a tale,
    and from my heart rain nectar down, and bitter gall.
12. A poem’s bleeding clotted on my eyelid,
    a poem that seeped out of my soul, a softly murmured strain.
13. A longing climbs my chest as vines climb up a trellis⁶, as though
    it were clusters of fire that ripened into thirst within my veins.
14. O you who ride the wave of dream, adrift and wandering,
    I see the horizon in your eyes, a sea that love has made its slave,
15. and in your palms I read the scripture⁷ of a tale
    that teaches me how love itself was schooled and trained.
16. It is as though my heart were a homeless bird
    whose two wings have grown weary of a sky all torn and frayed.
17. I’ll carry in my eyes a full moon and an exile,
    and set my face toward the road of longing, on my way,
18. and scatter tears across the desert of my life,
    in hope the heart’s spring may return when…⁸
19. A stranger’s hand poured out for me the cups of distance,
    and I became a stranger⁹ in the world, and orphaned too.
20. I clasp the phantom of my memories, in hope
    they may bring back into my soul a youth that’s slipped away.
21. I poured my poems out upon my soul’s mirror,
    that they might wring the secret, inspired, its entrails had contained.
22. A truth splintered upon the mirror of my eye,
    and I, together with the days, became one shattered wound.
23. I plant a cry in the silence of the distances,
    in hope the homelands’ echo may return in full refrain.
24. O you who journey silent in the procession of the night,
    I see you firmly set upon the goal you seek to gain;
25. and O homeland, beating ever in the heart,
    that pours into my soul its heady fragrance!
26. The secret of an exile has burst open deep within us,
    and the road of questioning beneath us is a mined terrain.
27. I’ll carve my poem in the rock of all the ages,
    and leave it there to tell the tale that others guess in vain¹⁰.
28. And I’ll go on to the farthest reach, alone,
    embracing in my silence eloquence that melody has framed.
29. O you who journey by night along the road of my exile,
    go slowly, for the full moon from the sky has called your name¹¹:
30. I kept you company in your exile; no, I was a witness
    to all the longing and the thirst you suffer and sustain.
31. I was the night’s companion, watching its silence,
    and witnessed a tear you held back, that streamed down all the same¹².
32. I see you whisper to the memories and to their days,
    and in your entrails bear a wound that has been set aflame.
33. I found you shepherding the stars¹³ night after night,
    your eyes pouring out their tears, and blood along with them.
34. And in your eyes I see a sea of grief,
    and a long night that has girded itself with moaning.
35. I did not know the night could carry exile in it,
    or that the blackness of the night could hold a wake.
36. And you draw for the homelands a map of visions,
    and give in trust to the turning spheres what stayed unexplained.
37. You chronicle the exile with the eyelids of a poet
    who distils from his own sides a passion that interprets and makes plain.
38. And in the silence of the distances you read a journey
    that exile drives off course, and ever farther from the homeland strays.
39. Al-Zarqāʾ¹⁴ gazed out from behind my eye,
    to set the vision free for me, that I might see deep into the sky.
40. I see how time drifts off in exile,
    and how the horizon turns into a vast and teeming sea.
41. I see a homeland yearning behind its mist,
    heaping the torn remains of longing, gathered up again.
42. And O you who carry in your heart a poem’s lightning
    that turns the exiles of wandering into a road and a waymark,
43. stirred by longing for a shade that would return to his embrace,
    to meet, beside the shore, the one whose dark lips are honey-sweet¹⁵:
44. I promised you I would spare no effort,
    and it is not far off that you will see the seed become a bud.
45. I shall pass on, and the night will stay, recalling a tale,
    and keep for those to come a secret, hidden and unnamed.
46. I set down in the book of time a poem
    that will make a wound and an epic¹⁶ deathless in history.
47. It will recount a tale from the road of exile,
    and leave the generations an inscribed¹⁷ book, page after page.
48. And it will remain, as the two ever-new ones¹⁸ pass, a witness
    to a time that, orphaned in the heart, will still remain.

26 October 2024

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