صَبَاحُ مَحَبَّةٍ وَلَيَالِ أُنْسِوَقُبْلَاتٌ عَلَى جِيدٍ وَلُعْسِ
تُحَرِّكُ فِيكِ ذِكْرَى أُمْسِيَاتٍقَضَيْنَاهَا بِضَمٍّ ثُمَّ مَسِّ
فَمَا أَحْلَى احْتِضَانَكِ كُلَّ صُبْحٍعَلَى شَفَتَيْكِ قُبْلَاتِي سَتُرْسِي
A Morning of Love1
- A morning of love, and nights of intimacy,
and kisses on a neck and on dusky lips2, - stirring in you the memory of evenings
we spent in an embrace, and then a caress. - How sweet it is to hold you every morning!
Upon your lips my kisses will drop anchor3 and rest.
Notes
- Ṣabāḥ maḥabba, 'a morning of love', plays on Arabic morning greetings such as ṣabāḥ al-khayr, 'a morning of good', that is, 'good morning'. The poem is itself a morning greeting. ↩
- Luʿs (plural of alʿas and laʿsāʾ) are lips with a dark, reddish-brown tint, a mark of beauty much praised in classical Arabic poetry. ↩
- Tursī, 'will drop anchor', from arsā, to anchor a ship and, by extension, to settle firmly and stay. The kisses do not merely land on her lips; they come to rest there, as a ship comes to rest in harbour. ↩
English translation prepared by artificial intelligence and reviewed against the Arabic for accuracy of meaning and rhetoric.