في سحر عينيها

لا تفطميني عن هواك حبيبتي
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
فِي سِحْرِ عَيْنَيْهَا وَفِي لَفَتَاتِهَاذَابَ الْفُؤَادُ الْمُسْتَهَامُ بِذَاتِهَا
وَأَدَارَتِ الْكَأْسَ الْمُحَيِّرَةَ الَّتِيوَصَلَتْ جَمَالَ عَوَالِمِي بِسِمَاتِهَا
وَأَرَتْنِيَ الدُّنْيَا تَبَسَّمُ حِينَ أَبْــدَتْ لِي لِتَنْعَمَ مُقْلَتِي بَسَمَاتِهَا
خَدٌّ وَلَيْسَ مُوَرَّدًا بَلْ مِنْ دَمِيإِذْ سَفَّحَتْهُ فَسَالَ فِي وَجَنَاتِهَا
وَشِفَاهُهَا لَيْسَتْ بِعُنَّابٍ، بَلَىهِيَ مُهْجَتِي شُوِيَتْ عَلَى لَدَغَاتِهَا
ثَغْرٌ ثَنَايَاهُ تُبِينُ طَهَارَتِيوَبَرَاءَتِي فِي حُبِّهَا لِصِفَاتِهَا
تَاهَ الْفُؤَادُ وَلَمْ يَزَلْ مُذْ أَنْ رَآهَا تَائِهًا مُتَحَيِّرًا بِفَلَاتِهَا
وَتَشَتَّتَتْ مِنِّي أَحَاسِيسِي فَلَاأَدْرِي أَتَجْمَعُنِي بِبَعْضِ شَتَاتِهَا
وَتَنَوَّعَتْ مِنِّي الْمَشَاعِرُ فَاسْتَوَىعِنْدِي تَبَايُنُ مَوْتِهَا وَحَيَاتِهَا
أَوَهَكَذَا كُلُّ الْحِسَانِ أَمِ انَّهَافِي كُلِّ مَا فِيهَا تَفُوقُ لِدَاتِهَا
فَإِذَا تَحَرَّكَ خَاطِرِي مِنْ رَعْشَتِيسَكَنَاتُهَا قَدْ خِلْتُهَا حَرَكَاتِهَا
وَإِذَا كَوَتْنِي فِي الْفُؤَادِ لَوَاعِجِيمَازَجْتُ بَيْنَ تَيَقُّظِي وَسُبَاتِهَا
كَمْ قَدْ كَوَتْنِي فِي لَهِيبِ جَحِيمِهَاوَأَخَالُنِي أَلْقَى صَبَا جَنَّاتِهَا
أَنَا إِنْ بَعُدْتُ عَنِ الْجَمَالِ مُعَذَّبٌوَإِذَا دَنَوْتُ هَلَكْتُ فِي فَتَكَاتِهَا
أَوَ لَيْسَ لِي مِنْ كُلِّ هَذَا الْقَدِّ وَالْــحُسْنِ الْبَدِيعِ سِوَى سَنَى نَظَرَاتِهَا
أَوَ لَيْسَ لِي غَيْرُ التَّمَلِّي فِيهِ؟ يَاعَجَبًا مَتَى سَأَذُوبُ فِي قُبُلَاتِهَا؟

ممباسا – كينيا
1991

The Spell of Her Eyes

  1. In the spell of her eyes and in the turning of her glances,
    my love-crazed heart has melted into that very self of hers.
  2. She passed around the cup that leaves the drinker dazed1,
    the cup that joined the beauty of my worlds to all her features,
  3. and showed me all the world was smiling when she came
    in sight, so that my eye might revel in her smiles2.
  4. A cheek, but not a rosy one: no, it is my blood,
    which she has shed, and it has flowed across her cheeks3.
  5. Her lips are not ripe jujubes; no, they are
    my very heart, roasted upon their stings4.
  6. A mouth whose gleaming front teeth show how pure I am,
    how innocent in loving her for her qualities5.
  7. My heart has lost its way, and since it saw her it has stayed
    lost and bewildered, wandering in her wastelands.
  8. My feelings scattered from me, and I cannot tell
    if she will gather me up with some of her own scattered shards6.
  9. My emotions grew so various that I came
    to find no difference now between their deaths and lives.
  10. Are all the beauties so? Or is it she alone
    who, in all that she is, outshines her peers?
  11. When trembling seizes me and sets my mind astir,
    I take her stillnesses to be her movements7.
  12. And when love’s pangs have seared me to the heart,
    I mingle all my wakefulness with her slumbers8.
  13. How often she has seared me in the flames of her hell,
    while I imagined I was meeting the east wind from her gardens9!
  14. If I am far from beauty, I am in torment;
    and if I draw near, I perish in her deadly onslaughts.
  15. Is nothing mine of all this graceful stature and this rare
    and wondrous beauty but the gleam of her glances?
  16. Is nothing mine but feasting my eyes on it? How strange!
    When shall I melt away in her kisses10?

Mombasa, Kenya, 1991

Notes

  1. The cup is the wine of love that the beloved pours, a familiar figure of Arabic love poetry; it ‘bewilders’ (al-muḥayyira) because it leaves the drinker dazed and unable to tell one thing from another, as the rest of the poem shows. ↩
  2. The Arabic links three words by sound: bi-simātihā, ‘her features’ (verse 2), tabassamu, ‘smiling’, and basamātihā, ‘her smiles’. This near-homophony (jinās) makes the world’s smile and her smile a single thing, and ties her features to both. ↩
  3. Arabic poets conventionally call a fair cheek ‘rosy’ (muwarrad). The poet denies the convention and offers a fanciful cause instead: the red on her cheek is his own blood, which she shed. This device, giving a playful, invented reason for a natural fact, is called ḥusn al-taʿlīl. ↩
  4. ʿUnnāb, the jujube, a small deep-red fruit, is a stock simile for red lips (and for hennaed fingertips). Again the poet rejects the simile: the redness is his own heart, roasted on the ‘stings’ (ladaghāt, the bites of a snake or scorpion) of her lips. The possessive ‘their’ may refer to the lips or to her. ↩
  5. The whiteness of the front teeth (thanāyā) is a classical mark of beauty. The poet turns it into a moral sign: their pure whiteness bears witness to his own purity, since he loves her for her qualities. ↩
  6. ‘Her scattered shards’ are the beloved’s: he wonders whether she will gather him up with some of her own scattered pieces, that is, take him back into herself. ↩
  7. Sakanāt (‘stillnesses’) and ḥarakāt (‘movements’) form a contrast (ṭibāq). They are also the grammarians’ terms for unvowelled and vowelled letters, a second sense an Arabic reader hears at once. The trembling lover can no longer tell her rest from her motion. ↩
  8. The verse sets his wakefulness against her sleep (ṭibāq): burning, he stays awake while she sleeps, until waking and sleeping merge. ↩
  9. Jaḥīm (hell) and jannāt (gardens, the usual Qur’anic word for Paradise) form a contrast: the same beloved is both his torment and his paradise. Ṣabā is the gentle east wind, cherished in Arabic love poetry as the breeze that carries the scent and the news of the beloved. ↩
  10. The poem closes on the verb with which it began: in verse 1 the heart ‘melted’ into her; now he asks when he will ‘melt away’ in her kisses. Between the two, all he has been granted is the sight of her. ↩

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