خرستَ دهرًا

لا تفطميني عن هواك حبيبتي
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
مَاذَا دَهَاكَ وَأَنْتَ الطَّائِرُ الْغَرِدُخَرِسْتَ دَهْرًا وَنَارٌ ثَمَّ تَتَّقِدُ
أَمَا تُحَرِّكُكَ الْأَنْبَاءُ صَارِخَةًفِي كُلِّ يَوْمٍ بِأَنَّ الْقُدْسَ تُضْطَهَدُ
أَيْنَ الْقَوَافِي الَّتِي إِذْ كُنْتَ تُرْسِلُهَاتُذْوِي السَّبَائِكَ أَوْ يَنْحَلُّ مُنْعَقِدُ
وَأَيْنَ مِنْكَ يَرَاعٌ إِذْ تُسَلْسِلُهُيُذِيبُ صَخْرًا، وَيَهْوِي الْقَيْدُ وَالصَّفَدُ
مَهْلًا عَلَيَّ عَذُولِي إِنَّنِي سَأَمًاهَجَرْتُ شِعْرِي وَنَثْرِي لَيْسَ يَطَّرِدُ
فَقَدْ تَيَقَّنْتُ أَنَّ السَّيْفَ مُفْتَخَرِيوَأَنَّ مَا يَقْتُلُ الْأَعْدَاءَ مُفْتَقَدُ
جَرَّعْتُ شِعْرِي سُمُومًا لَا دَوَاءَ لَهَاثُمَّ امْتَشَقْتُ سُيُوفًا مَا لَهَا أَحَدُ

ممباسا – كينيا
2000م

Mute for an Age

  1. What has come over you, you singing bird?
    You've been mute for an age, while over there a fire burns red.
  2. Do the reports not stir you, crying out each day
    that Jerusalem1 is persecuted?
  3. Where are the rhymes that, when you sent them forth,
    would melt down ingots or undo each knotted thread?
  4. And where is that pen of yours which, when you let it run,
    would melt the rock, and every shackle, every chain, was shed?
  5. Go easy on me, my reproacher2! Out of weariness
    I have abandoned verse, and my prose no longer flows.
  6. For I am certain now: the sword is my pride,
    and what we lack3 is what would strike the enemy dead.
  7. I made my poetry drink poisons that no cure can heal4,
    then drew my swords alone, with no one at their side, unled.

Mombasa, Kenya, 2000

Notes

  1. Al-Quds, the Arabic name of Jerusalem, means 'the Holy'. The poem is dated 2000, the year the Second Intifada broke out in the autumn after Ariel Sharon's visit to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound. ↩
  2. The first four verses are the words of the ʿadhūl, the 'reproacher' or blamer, a stock figure of Arabic poetry who scolds the poet; from verse 5 the poet answers him. ↩
  3. The thought recalls Abū Tammām's famous line on the conquest of Amorium: 'The sword is truer in its tidings (anbāʾ) than books.' The 'reports' (anbāʾ) of verse 2 cry out, but words, however strong, do not kill the enemy; the sword does, and it is the sword that is missing. ↩
  4. The poet has killed his poetry, giving it poisons with no antidote, and taken up swords in its place, in keeping with verse 5, 'I have abandoned verse'. Mā lahā aḥad, literally 'that have no one', means swords with no one beside them: he draws them as a lone man, with no army or ally at his side, since, as verse 6 says, what would strike the enemy is lacking. ↩

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