عانقت

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
عَانَقْتُ، قُلْتُ سَأُطْفِي حَرَّ مَا أَجِدُفَظَامِئُ الشَّوْقِ بِالْأَحْضَانِ يَبْتَرِدُ
وَكُلَّمَا ضَمَّتِ الْأَضْلَاعُ زِدْتُ جَوًىوَزَادَنِي ظَمَأً لِلْحِضْنِ يَحْتَشِدُ
فَكَيْفَ يَا نَاسُ أُطْفِي لَوْعَتِي وَأَنَابِمَا يَبُلُّ الْجَوَى قَدْ صِرْتُ أَتَّقِدُ
يَا رَاجِيَ الضَّمِّ ظَنًّا أَنَّهُ سَكَنٌلِلرُّوحِ فِي الضَّمِّ مِنْ أَشْوَاقِهِ مَدَدُ

I Embraced

  1. I embraced, and said: I'll quench the heat of what I feel,
    for one parched with longing finds his coolness in embrace.
  2. But every time rib pressed on rib, my passion grew,
    and thirst for the embrace came crowding, wave on wave.
  3. So how, good people, can I quench my burning, when
    the very thing that should damp down my passion sets me ablaze?1
  4. You who hope for an embrace, thinking it a place of rest2
    for the soul: in the embrace, longing only finds fresh supplies.

Notes

  1. The paradox runs through the poem: the cure becomes the disease. What should ‘moisten’ (yabullu) the fever of love only kindles it. Yā nās, ‘O people’, is a direct, almost colloquial appeal to anyone who will listen. ↩
  2. Sakan is rest, stillness, and also the person in whom one finds repose; the Qurʾan speaks of spouses created so that ‘you may find rest in them’ (li-taskunū ilayhā, Qurʾan 30:21). Madad is a supply or reinforcement, as of troops or provisions: far from bringing rest, the embrace sends longing new reinforcements. ↩

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