معذّب

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
مُعَذَّبٌ بِهَوًى يَشْقَى الْفُؤَادُ بِهِوَلَا يَزَالُ مُقِيمًا عِنْدَ مُتْلِفَتِهْ
مَهْمَا أَصَرَّتْ عَلَى التَّعْذِيبِ، آنَسَهُعَذَابُهَا، وَتَمَنَّى وَجْهَ مُؤْنِسَتِهْ
فَلِي فُؤَادٌ إِذَا طَالَ الْعَذَابُ بِهِيَهِيمُ شَوْقًا إِلَى لُقْيَا مُعَذِّبَتِهْ
يَمُدُّ كَفًّا إِلَى مَنْ شَقَّ مُهْجَتَهُكَأَنَّمَا عُمْرُهُ فِي كَفِّ قَاتِلَتِهْ
وَيَحْفَظُ الْجُرْحَ لَا يَرْضَى مُفَارَقَةًمَا دَامَ يَحْمِلُ عِطْرًا مِنْ مُعَانِقَتِهْ
وَكُلَّمَا قَالَ: بَعْضُ الْبُعْدِ يُنْقِذُنِيأَلْقَى بِهِ الشَّوْقُ فِي أَحْضَانِ فَاتِنَتِهْ
تَكْفِيهِ بَسْمَتُهَا كَيْمَا يُصَدِّقَهَاوَيَسْتَرِيحَ قَلِيلًا مِنْ مُكَابَدَتِهْ
وَلَسْتُ أَدْرِي أَهَذَا الْحُبُّ يَسْكُنُنِيأَمْ أَنَّنِي صِرْتُ ظِلًّا فِي مُخَيِّلَتِهْ

Tormented

  1. Tormented by a love that wrings the heart,
    he lingers still beside his own destroyer1.
  2. No matter how she persists in tormenting him,
    her torment keeps him company2; he longs to see his consoler.
  3. For I have a heart3 that, as its torment lengthens,
    goes roaming, mad with longing, to meet its tormentor.
  4. It reaches out a hand to her who tore its soul,
    as though its life lay in the hand of its own slayer.
  5. It guards its wound and will not let it go,
    so long as it still bears the fragrance of her embrace.
  6. And every time it says, “A little distance saves me,”
    its longing flings it in the arms of its enchantress.
  7. Her smile is all it takes for it to trust her,
    and rest a while from all the pain it has to weather.
  8. And I don't know: is it this love that dwells in me,
    or have I turned into a shadow in its imagination?4

Notes

  1. Almost every verse ends on a feminine participle with the pronoun 'him' or 'it' attached: mutlifatih ('she who destroys him'), muʾnisatih ('she who consoles him'), muʿadhdhibatih ('she who torments him'), qātilatih ('she who kills him'), muʿāniqatih ('she who embraces him'), fātinatih ('she who bewitches him'). The beloved is never named, only defined by what she does to the lover, and the list swings between cruelty and tenderness, which is the paradox the whole poem turns on. ↩
  2. The verse is built on a paradox: her torment (ʿadhāb) is itself what comforts him (ānasahu, literally 'kept him company', that is, consoled him), and the 'consoler' (muʾnisa, from the same root) he longs for is the very woman who torments him. The echo of ānasahu and muʾnisatih makes the two roles one. ↩
  3. The first two verses speak of 'him' in the third person; here the poet reveals that the tormented one is his own heart ('for I have a heart'). From here on the 'he' of the Arabic is the heart, rendered 'it'. Yahīmu, 'goes roaming, mad with longing', comes from hiyām, the extreme of love that makes the lover wander aimlessly, as if mad. ↩
  4. The possessive in mukhayyilatih ('its imagination') refers most naturally to the nearest masculine noun, al-ḥubb, 'love'. The closing question therefore reverses the relation: perhaps the poet is not the one who houses love, but a mere figment that Love itself is dreaming. The word can also be read as referring back to the heart ('a shadow in the heart's imagination'), which keeps the same sense of the self dissolving into its passion. ↩

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