يا للهوى

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
بِتْنَا بِحُبٍّ مُرْهِقٍ وَجَعَايَظَلُّ فِيهِ الْوَصْلُ مُمْتَنِعَا
أَحْرَى بِهِ إِذْ يَسْتَبِدُّ بِنَاأَنْ يَسْتَعِيدَ الشَّمْلَ مُجْتَمِعَا
يَا لَلْهَوَى كَمْ فِيهِ قَدْ وَقَعَامِنْ فَارِسٍ فِي شَادِنٍ صُرِعَا
فِيهِ الْجَمِيعُ اسْتَهْدَفُوا غَرَضًاوَالْكُلُّ يَدْرِي أَنَّهُ انْصَرَعَا
لَا الْحُبُّ يَعْيَا فِي تَنَوُّعِهِوَلَا الْمُحِبُّ صَدَّ فَانْتَفَعَا
يَا لَلْأَعَاجِيبِ الَّتِي انْصَرَمَتْمِنْ أَمْرِهِ، مِمَّا الزَّمَانُ وَعَى
لَكِنَّهُ دَوْمًا يُفَاجِئُنَابِمُعْجِزٍ مِنْ أَمْرِهِ ابْتَدَعَا
وَبَدْؤُهُ شَرَارَةٌ سَطَرَتْحَرْفًا سَرَى فِي السِّرِّ فَانْدَلَعَا
الرُّوحُ وَالْجِسْمُ هُمَا عَجَبٌكَمْ بَعُدَا وَكَمْ قَدِ اجْتَمَعَا
مَا دُمْتَ قَدْ أَشْعَلْتَ رُوحَيْهِمَاهَلَّا جَمَعْتَ الْعَاشِقَيْنِ مَعَا؟

Oh, Love!1

  1. We spent the night in love that wears and wounds,
    a love in which our union never can be won.
  2. Since it holds us in its tyranny, how fitting
    that it restore our scattered union, and bring it home!
  3. Oh, Love!1 How many horsemen tumbled into it,
    struck by a young gazelle2 and overthrown!
  4. In it they all took aim, each at a mark,
    and each one knows he was the one brought down3.
  5. Love never wearies, changing all its forms;
    nor has a lover spurned it and some profit won.
  6. Oh, the marvels of its doings, come and gone,
    of all that time has kept in memory and known!
  7. And yet it always takes us by surprise
    with some new miracle, invented on its own.
  8. Its source: a spark that wrote a single letter,
    creeping by night in secret4, till it blazed full-grown.
  9. Soul and body are a wonder, both:
    how often parted, and how often joined as one!
  10. Since you have set both their souls alight,
    will you not join the two lovers into one?5

Notes

  1. Yā la-l-hawā is the Arabic cry of wonder and appeal (istighātha, taʿajjub): the lām calls on love as one calls on something astonishing, or on a helper in distress. The exclamation returns in verse 3. ↩
  2. Shādin is a young gazelle just grown strong enough to leave its mother, a classical image for the beloved’s grace and large dark eyes. The paradox is the point: the armed horseman, emblem of valour, is felled by the most defenceless of creatures. ↩
  3. The hunter becomes the quarry. Each lover set out to win a prize, and each knows that he, not the beloved, was the one struck down (inṣaraʿa). The verb picks up ṣuriʿa, ‘laid low’, from the previous verse. ↩
  4. Sarā fī al-sirr: sarā means to travel by night, and sirr means a secret. The two words sound almost alike (jinās), so the letter slips along both ‘by night’ and ‘in secret’, like a spark creeping unseen before the blaze. ↩
  5. The ‘you’ is Love itself, addressed directly. Hallā is a particle of urging (taḥḍīḍ): not a real question but a pressing plea. Having kindled both souls, Love ought to finish its work and unite the lovers. ↩

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