كورونا

أنت أبهى
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
استمع إلى القصيدة
تَقُولُ: مُشْتَاقَةٌ لِلضَّمِّ وَالْقُبَلِوَإِنْ دَنَوْتُ نَأَتْ عَنِّي عَلَى عَجَلِ
فَهَمُّهَا الدَّهْرَ كُورُونَا وَهَاجِسُهَاوَ«لَا مَسَاسَ» شِعَارٌ ظَلَّ يُرْفَعُ لِي
أَقُولُ يَا مُنْيَتِي أَنْتِ الدَّوَاءُ لَهَافَضَمَّةٌ مِنْكِ تَكْفِي، كَيْفَ؟ لَا تَسَلِي!
حَرَارَةُ الشَّوْقِ، وَالنَّارُ الَّتِي اتَّقَدَتْفِي مُهْجَتِي وَاحْمِرَارُ اللُّعْسِ كَالشُّعَلِ
تُطْفِي كُرُونَا وَتُعْيِيهَا وَتَقْتُلُهَافَلَا تَكُونُ عَلَى كَفٍّ وَلَا مُقَلِ
وَحِينَ يُلْهِبُكِ التَّقْبِيلُ فَهْوَ لَهَامَنَاعَةٌ، صَدِّقِينِي الْيَوْمَ وَامْتَثِلِي!
أَقْنَعْتُهَا، فَجَرَتْ نَحْوِي لِتَحْضُنَنِيوَقُلْتُ يَا رَبِّ فَاغْفِرْ لِي عَلَى خَطَلِي!
وَأَغْرَقَتْنِي بِبَحْرٍ مِنْ «تَشَعْلُلِهَا»وَكُنْتُ قَبْلُ أُرَجِّيهَا بِلَا أَمَلِ

Corona

  1. She says: “I'm longing to be hugged and kissed,”
    and yet, when I draw near, she hastens to retire.
  2. Corona is her obsession and her constant worry,
    and “No touching!”1 is the slogan she keeps holding up to me.
  3. I say: “My heart's desire, you are its cure:
    one hug from you will do. How so? Do not inquire!
  4. The heat of longing, and the blaze that burns
    within my heart, and dusky lips glowing red like fire,
  5. put out Corona, wear it down, and kill it,
    so that on hand or eye2 it finds no place, and must expire.
  6. And when the kissing sets you burning, it becomes
    immunity against it. Believe me now, and do as I require!”
  7. I won her over: she ran to me to hold me,
    and I said, “O Lord, forgive me all my foolish talk!”
  8. And she drowned me in a sea of her “flaring up”3,
    when before I had pleaded with her, without hope.

Notes

  1. Lā misās, ‘no touching’, is a Qur'anic phrase (Qur'an 20:97): it is the sentence passed on al-Sāmirī, maker of the golden calf, condemned to cry out all his life ‘Do not touch me!’ and to live shunned. Quoted of a woman afraid of the virus, the phrase is both apt and comic. ↩
  2. An allusion to the public health advice of the pandemic: the virus passes by the hands, and one must not touch one's face or eyes. The fire of love, the lover argues, leaves it nowhere to live. ↩
  3. Tashaʿlulhā, in quotation marks in the Arabic, is a playful, colloquial-sounding coinage from shuʿla, ‘flame’, echoing ‘like flames’ (ka'l-shuʿal) in verse 4: her ‘flaring up’, her burst of fiery passion. ↩

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