دمعت

Notes

1. ʿAzzat fī nafsī damʿatuhā: the verb ʿazza means both ‘to be precious, dear’ and ‘to be grievous, hard to bear’, so her tear was at once precious to him and painful to him. The root ʿ-z-z returns through the poem (ʿizz, ‘glory’, in verse 5; aʿazz, ‘more exalted’, in verse 10), and every verse rhymes on the doubled z of -zzā. ↩
2. The rhyme words hazzā, azzā and jazzā are cognate accusatives: literally ‘shakes it a shaking’, ‘goads me a goading’, ‘cuts a cutting’. Arabic uses the device for emphasis; heaped up at the ends of verses on the hard doubled z, it gives the poem a hammering, relentless beat, which English can only partly keep by repetition. ↩
3. Taʾuzzunī azzā echoes Qurʾan 19:83, where the devils are said to incite the unbelievers taʾuzzuhum azzā, ‘goading them on relentlessly’. The verb means to stir up and drive restlessly, as a pot is set seething on the fire. ↩
4. Al-watīn is the great artery that leaves the heart, whose severing means death; the Qurʾan (69:46) uses it in ‘We would have cut his life-artery’. Her moans wound him mortally. ↩
5. Shazza is a rare word, read here as a form of shadhdha, ‘to stray, deviate, be out of line’: the poet grants that his words may have gone astray while insisting that his conduct, his intention, has not. The word may also carry a sense of harshness. Either way the verse is an apology: the fault lay in the wording, not in the heart. ↩
6. Ruziʾti, ‘you were stricken’, and al-murazzā, ‘the one sorely stricken’, set her against the poet: the blow she felt falls back on him. Murazzā also chimes with razzat in the next verse, which means something else entirely: the rumbling of thunder. ↩
7. Muzz is a taste between sweet and sour, as of certain pomegranates. Love is at once delicious and sharp; hence the wish that it had never come. ↩
8. Lamz is sly fault-finding, a hint or a wink at someone’s expense, and hamz, the rhyme word of the next verse, is its twin, backbiting; the two are paired in the Qurʾan (104:1, ‘Woe to every slanderer, backbiter’, humaza lumaza). But hamz is also the hamza, the glottal-stop sign of Arabic writing, easily confused with the alif that often carries it. ‘Telling the alif from the hamza’ means speaking with perfect precision. The double sense of hamz lets the poet say at once that he neither backbites nor blurs his words. ↩
9. Al-muʿazzā is the bereaved person who receives condolences (taʿziya). Since the love will never die, there will be no mourning and no condolences. The word also echoes ʿizz and aʿazz earlier in the poem, though its root is different. ↩