فكّي الزر!

أنت أبهى
ترجمة إنجليزية
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وَكُلَّمَا قُلْتُ فُكِّي الزِّرَّ عَنْكِ أَرَىٰنَهْدَيْكِ عَلَّ يُهَدِّي الرَّوْعَ مَا اسْتَتَرَا
تَفَاجَأَتْ، صَرَخَتْ «مَجْنُونُ». قُلْتُ لَهَا:نَعَمْ جُنِنْتُ، فَهَلْ يُجْدِي الْجُنُونُ تُرَى
جُنِنْتُ فِيكِ، أَعِيدِينِي إِلَى رَشَدِيفَأَنْتِ آسِرَتِي، يَا خَيْرَ مَنْ أَسَرَا
تَوَلُّهِي فِيكِ، فِي عَيْنَيْكِ، فِي جَسَدٍكَأَنَّهُ صِيغَ مُوسِيقَى انْجَلَتْ بَشَرَا
إِذَا بَرَزْتِ كَأَنَّ اللَّحْنَ مُنْسَكِبٌوَإِنْ مَشَيْتِ سَرَى فِي الْقَلْبِ مُنْهَمِرَا
نَهْدَاكِ كُتْلَةُ أَنْغَامٍ تُرَاقِصُنِيإِذَا خَطَوْتِ شَدَدْتِ الْعُودَ وَالْوَتَرَا
إِنْ كُنْتِ لَحْنًا، فَشِعْرِي فِيكِ أُغْنِيَةٌفَرَاقِصِي كَلِمَاتِي تُبْهِرِي النَّظَرَا
وَمَنْ يُغَنِّيكِ يَا لَحْنَ الْغَرَامِ سِوَىمَنْ جُنَّ بِالْحُسْنِ أَمْ بِالْخَمْرِ قَدْ سَكِرَا

Undo Your Button!

  1. And every time I said, “Undo your button, let me see
    your breasts; perhaps what's hidden might allay1 my fright,”
  2. she started, and cried “Madman!”2 Then I told her: “Yes,
    I've gone mad. But will madness help me, I wonder, in my plight?
  3. I've gone mad over you: give back my reason, set me right,
    for you're my captor, you, the best3 of all who ever took a captive.
  4. My passion is for you, your eyes, a body that seems wrought
    of music, then unveiled in human form before my sight.
  5. When you appear, it is as though a melody were poured;
    and when you walk, it streams into the heart, a torrent stealing in by night.
  6. Your breasts are clustered melodies that dance with me;
    and when you step, you tune the lute and draw its strings4 up tight.
  7. If you're a melody, then my verse about you is a song:
    so dance, then, to my words, and dazzle every eye in sight.
  8. And who could sing you, melody of love, but one
    gone mad for beauty, or a drunkard lost to wine's delight?”5

Notes

  1. The Arabic pairs nahdayki, 'your breasts', with yuhaddī, 'calms, allays', two words that sound almost alike (jinās). The speaker presents his bold request as a remedy: the sight he asks for would, he claims, soothe the very agitation it causes. ↩
  2. Majnūn, 'madman', is also the name by which Arabic tradition knows the archetypal lover, Qays, driven mad by his love for Laylā. The speaker accepts the insult as a lover's title, then asks, half in jest, whether his madness will get him anywhere. ↩
  3. The paradox is deliberate: he asks the woman who has taken his reason captive to be the one who restores it. The closing praise, 'the best of all who ever took a captive', turns the complaint into a compliment. ↩
  4. Tightening the strings is how the lute is tuned. Each step she takes sets the music of her body in tune and draws taut the one who watches her. ↩
  5. The question is rhetorical and returns to the madness of verse 2. It sets two kinds of intoxication side by side, being maddened by beauty and being drunk on wine, and implies that only a man in such a state could sing her. The speaker has already confessed to the first. ↩

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