أنا؟ من أنا؟

أنت أبهى
ترجمة إنجليزية
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أَنَا؟ مَنْ أَنَا؟ خَفْقٌ بِقَلْـبِكِ أَمْ لَهِيبٌ مَا انْطَفَا
أَمْعَنْتِ فِي إِخْفَائِهِحَذَراً وَلَكِنْ مَا اخْتَفَىٰ
أَوْ دَمْعَةٌ مِنْ مُقْلَتَيْـكِ هَمَتْ، وَكَفُّكِ كَفْكَفَا
أَوْ شَدْوُ دَنْدَنَةٍ هَتَفْـتِ بِهَا وَسَمْعِيَ شَنَّفَا
حَذَراً أَرُودُ بِنَاظِرَيْـكِ وَدَمْعُ وَجْدِكِ قَدْ ضَفَا
وَإِذَا مَرَرْتِ بِخَاطِرِيانْتَفَضَ الْفُؤَادُ وَرَفْرَفَا
وَاهْتَزَّ شَوْقاً لِلِّقَاوَإِلَى احْتِضَانِكِ قَدْ هَفَا
إِذْ بَشَّرَتْهُ اللَّهْفَةُ الْحَرَّى بِمَنْ قَدْ أَسْعَفَا
أَنَا خَاطِرُ الْوَلْهَانِ، لَمْيَهْلِكْ وَظَلَّ عَلَى شَفَا
أَصْغَى إِلَى هَمْسِ الْوُرُودِ وَصَاغَ مِنْهُ الْأَحْرُفَا
وَأَصَاخَ لِلْغِرِّيدِ مِنْشَجَنِ الْمَوَاجِعِ فَاشْتَفَى
نَسَجَ الْحَنِينَ مَوَاجِدَاتَلْقَاكِ فِي دَرْبِ الْوَفَا
هَلْ تَسْمَعِينَ شُجُونَهُأَمْ تَرْحَمِينَ إِذَا هَفَا؟
قَلْبٌ إِذَا اشْتَقْتُ اسْتَلَـذَّ وَإِنْ شَكَوْتُ تَلَطَّفَا
فَيَضُمُّنِي لِحَنَانِهِوَأَضُمُّهُ مُسْتَعْطِفَا
كَاللُّطْفِ يَحْنُو آسِياًفَإِذَا أَسَا قَلْبِي عَفَا
وَإِذَا اسْتَبَدَّ بِيَ الْجَوَىفِي الْحُبِّ يَأْتِي مُسْعِفَا
يَتَمَاوَجُ الشَّعْرُ الْحَرِيـرُ يَطِيرُ ثُمَّ مُهَفْهَفَا
وَأَنَامِلِي كَصَباً تَهُبْــبُ إِذَا عَبَثْتُ بِهِ احْتَفَى
سَكِرَتْ جَمِيعُ جَوَانِحِيلَكِنَّ رُوحِي مَا اكْتَفَى
يَا مَنْ أُجَنُّ بِهَا وَأَجْـبُنُ أَنْ أَبُوحَ بِمَا اخْتَفَى
وَأُجِنُّهَا فِي مُهْجَتِيلِتَكُونَ أَخْفَى مِ الْخَفَا
مَهْمَا كَتَمْتُ هَوَاكِ فِيقَلْبِي بَدَا وَتَكَشَّفَا
وَإِذَا سَلَكْتِ مَحَجَّةًفَالْقَلْبُ لِلْأَثَرِ اقْتَفَى
أَخْلَصْتُ حُبِّي مُنْصِفاًلَوْ أَنَّ حُبّاً أَنْصَفَا!
لَا مُهْجَتِي تَسْلُو وَلَافِي لَيْلِهِ طَرْفِي غَفَا
يَا مَنْ ثَمِلْتُ بِحُبِّهَاوَحَسَوْتُ مِنْهُ مَا صَفَا
أَنَا مَا اكْتَفَيْتُ مِنَ السُّلَافِ فَلَا تَقُولِي لِي كَفَى!

Me? Who Am I?

  1. Me? Who am I? A throb within your heart,
    or a flame that never died?
  2. You tried so hard to hide it,
    wary, yet it would not hide.
  3. Or a tear that streamed from your eyes
    till your palm1 brushed it aside?
  4. Or the hum of a song you sang aloud,
    and my ear wore2 it like a jewel?
  5. Warily I wander through your eyes,
    where your tears of longing overflowed.
  6. And when you pass through my thoughts,
    my heart starts up and beats its wings,
  7. and trembles, longing for the meeting,
    and yearns to be clasped to your side,
  8. for burning eagerness brought it the news
    that its rescuer had arrived.
  9. I am the thought of a man crazed with love,
    that stays at the brink3, and has not died.
  10. It listened to the whisper of the roses
    and shaped its letters out of what they sighed,
  11. and, from the grief of its aching wounds, gave ear
    to the songbird, and its pain subsided.
  12. It wove its longing into raptures
    that meet you on the road of faithfulness.
  13. Do you hear its sorrows?
    Or will you pity it when it yearns, or strays aside4?
  14. A heart that, when I long, takes delight,
    and when I complain, is gentle and kind,
  15. that holds me close to its tenderness
    while I, imploring, hold it tight,
  16. like kindness bending down to heal;
    and if my heart does wrong5, it sets the fault aside.
  17. And when love's fever tyrannises me,
    it hurries, rescuing, to my side.
  18. The silken hair ripples in waves,
    flies up, then floats, as light as air, and glides,
  19. and my fingertips blow like the east wind6:
    when I play in it, it greets them, delighted.
  20. Every part of me within is drunk,
    and yet my soul is not satisfied.
  21. O you for whom I go mad7, and yet
    I am too timid to reveal what lies hidden inside:
  22. I veil you7 in my inmost heart,
    that you may lie more hidden than hiddenness8 itself.
  23. However much I hide your love
    within my heart, it shows itself, laid bare, undisguised.
  24. And if you take some road,
    my heart follows your footprints, stride by stride.
  25. I made my love sincere, and I was fair:
    if only love were ever fair!
  26. My heart finds no consolation, and my eye
    has never dozed through love's long night.
  27. O you whose love has made me drunk,
    whose purest draughts I have imbibed:
  28. I have not had my fill of this wine9,
    so do not tell me, “Enough!”

Notes

  1. Kaffuki kafkafa, ‘your palm wiped it away’: kaff (palm of the hand) and kafkafa (to wipe away tears, to hold them back) share their sounds (jinās), so the gesture echoes in the words themselves. ↩
  2. Shannafa, ‘to hang an earring (shanf) on the ear’: the sound of her song does not merely reach his ear, it adorns it, and he wears it like a jewel. ↩
  3. The verse answers the opening question ‘Who am I?’: he is only a thought, the lingering state of mind of a man crazed with love. ʿAlā shafā, ‘on the brink’, echoes the Qur'anic phrase ʿalā shafā ḥufratin, ‘on the brink of a pit’ (Qur'an 3:103): he has not perished, but he stands at the very edge of ruin. ↩
  4. Hafā has two senses: ‘to yearn, to long for’ and ‘to slip, to err’ (whence hafwa, a lapse). The question asks both whether she will pity its longing and whether she will forgive its missteps. ↩
  5. The verse plays on āsiyan, ‘healing’ (from asā, to tend a wound), and asā, read here as asāʾa, ‘to do wrong’, with the hamza dropped. The same letters could also mean ‘when it has healed my heart, it lets it be’. The reading ‘does wrong’ best fits the pardon (ʿafā) that follows. ↩
  6. Ṣabā is the gentle east wind of Arabic poetry, the breeze of dawn and of lovers, which carries messages between them and plays with branches and hair. His fingers in her hair are as light as that breeze. ↩
  7. The two verses play on ujannu, ‘I go mad’, and ujinnu, ‘I conceal’, from the same root j-n-n, which carries the idea of hiddenness (the jinn are the hidden beings, and madness is the mind veiled). The word ajbunu, ‘I am too cowardly’, adds a third echo. The madness she causes and the secret he keeps are, in Arabic, one and the same root. ↩
  8. Akhfā mi-l-khafā, ‘more hidden than hiddenness’: mi- is min, ‘than’, clipped before the article as in speech, and al-khafā is hiddenness itself. She is to be hidden even more deeply than concealment can hide anything. ↩
  9. Sulāf is the first, purest juice that runs from the grapes, the finest wine. Wine and drunkenness here, as throughout Arabic love poetry, are metaphors for the intoxication of love. ↩

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