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وَمَا كُنْتُ أَدْرِي قَبْلَ لَيْلَايَ مَا الْهَوَىوَلَا الشَّوْقَ حَتَّى فِي فُؤَادِيَ حَلَّتِ
كَأَنَّ الْهَوَى لَمْ يَعْرِفِ الْقَلْبَ قَبْلَهَاوَلَا انْتَفَضَتْ مِنِّي الضُّلُوعُ وَحَنَّتِ
كَأَنَّ فُؤَادِي كَانَ فِي الْحُبِّ لَاهِياًكَطِفْلٍ، وَنَفْسِي فِي الصَّبَابَةِ ضَلَّتِ
إِلَى أَنْ أَتَتْنِي فَاغْتَدَى الْقَلْبُ يَافِعاًوَيَخْفِقُ بِالْحُبِّ الَّذِي هِيَ بَثَّتِ
غَذَتْنِي هَوَاهَا ثُمَّ أَنْسَتْنِيَ الدُّنَىفَيَا نِعْمَ مَا أَنْسَتْ فُؤَادِي وَغَذَّتِ
أَهِيمُ بِهَا وَجْداً وَتَشْتَاقُ مُهْجَتِيكَعُصْفُورَةٍ بُلَّتْ وَلِلدِّفْءِ حَنَّتِ
أَتَعْجَبُ مِنِّي أَنْ أُجَنَّ بِمِثْلِهَاوَأَنْ أَهْجُرَ اللَّذَّاتِ إِنْ هِيَ وَلَّتِ
وَقَدْ جُنَّ قَبْلِي بِالْهَوَى غَيْرُ وَاحِدٍوَلَا مِنْهُمُ مَنْ جُنَّ فِي مِثْلِ جِنَّتِي
تَبِيتُ عُيُونٌ لَمْ تَذُقْ بَعْضَ شَوْقِنَاوَيَجْفُو الْكَرَى عَيْنِي عَلَى مَنْ أَحَبَّتِ
وَدِدْتُ لَوَ انِّي أَسْمَعُ الْيَوْمَ صَوْتَهَافَتَنْثَالُ فِي سَمْعِي لُحُونٌ تَغَنَّتِ
وَأَرْفَعُ عَنْ صَدْرِ الْحَبِيبَةِ ضِيقَهَاوَأَمْسَحُ عَنْهَا دَمْعَةً قَدْ أَهَلَّتِ
وَلَكِنَّهَا ضَنَّتْ وَتِلْكَ مُصِيبَتِيفَسُحْقاً لِجُودِ الدَّهْرِ إِنْ هِيَ ضَنَّتِ
فَلَسْتُ مُقِيماً لَيْلَتِي غَيْرَ مُكْتَوٍبِجَمْرٍ وَلَا الْعَيْنَانِ تَأْوِي لِغَمْضَةِ
لِحُبِّكَ قَدْ غَنَّى فُؤَادِي عَلَى النَّوَىوَيَبْكِي إِذَا عَنْهُ الْحَبِيبَةُ وَلَّتِ

I Never Knew

  1. Before my Laylā1 I never knew what passion was,
    nor longing, till she came into my heart to stay2.
  2. As though love had never known this heart before her,
    nor had my ribs once quivered, and once yearned;
  3. as though my heart had only played at love,
    a child, and my soul in longing gone astray,
  4. until she came to me, and my heart grew into youth,
    and beats with all the love that she herself instilled.
  5. She fed me on her love, then made me forget the world:
    how well she made my heart forget! How well she fed it!
  6. I wander, lost in love for her, and my heart’s core longs
    like a sparrow soaked by the rain, that yearns for warmth3.
  7. Do you wonder that I go mad for one like her,
    and forsake all pleasures if she turns away?
  8. Before me, more than one was driven mad by love4,
    yet none of them was mad with such a madness as mine.
  9. Eyes that have never tasted a drop of our longing sleep the night through,
    while slumber shuns my eye for the one it loves.
  10. How I wish that I could hear her voice today,
    and melodies she’s sung would pour into my ear,
  11. and I could lift the heaviness from my beloved’s breast,
    and wipe away a tear just starting on its way.
  12. But she has been sparing, and that is my calamity:
    so perish all Time’s bounty5, if she will keep away!
  13. So I shall spend no night but seared by embers,
    nor will my eyes find shelter in a wink of sleep.
  14. For love of you my heart has sung across the distance,
    and it weeps whenever the beloved turns away.

Notes

  1. Laylā is the beloved of Majnūn, Qays ibn al-Mulawwaḥ, the proverbial lover of Arabic tradition, driven mad by love; ‘my Laylā’ has become a way of naming one’s own beloved. The poem returns to the allusion in verse 8. ↩
  2. The opening echoes a famous verse of the Umayyad poet Kuthayyir ʿAzza, from his poem in the same metre and rhyme: ‘Before ʿAzza I never knew what weeping was, nor the heart’s pangs, until she turned away.’ The poet puts his own Laylā in place of ʿAzza and the coming of love in place of its departure; Kuthayyir’s ‘she turned away’ (tawallat) returns in verses 7 and 14. ↩
  3. The image recalls a famous verse attributed to the Umayyad poet Abū Ṣakhr al-Hudhalī, in which a trembling seizes the lover at the memory of his beloved, ‘as the sparrow shivers when the rain has wet it’. ↩
  4. Junna, ‘he went mad’, and jinna, ‘madness’, come from the root of the jinn: to be mad (majnūn) was to be possessed. The verse points to Majnūn Laylā and to all the love-mad poets of the tradition, and claims to outdo them. ↩
  5. Ḍannat, ‘she was sparing’, means that she withheld herself: her voice, her nearness. The curse saḥqan, ‘may it be crushed, away with it!’, falls on whatever gifts Fortune may bring: they are worthless if she withholds herself. ↩

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