إِنْ تَتُوبِي عَنْ هَوَاكِكَيْفَ لِي عَنْكِ أَتُوبُ
أَنْتِ لِي أَحْلَى ذُنُوبِي،كَيْفَ إِذْ تَحْلُو الذُّنُوبُ؟
How Can I Repent of You?1
- If you repent of your love,
how can I repent of you? - You are the sweetest of my sins:
when sins are sweet, what can I do?
Notes
- Tawba, repentance, is a religious term: turning away from sin and back to God. The poem borrows it for love. She may give up her love as one gives up a sin, but he cannot, for she is his sin, and the sweetest one. The paradox of the ‘sweet sin’ is the whole of this two-verse poem. ↩
English translation prepared by artificial intelligence and reviewed against the Arabic for accuracy of meaning and rhetoric.