لوعة البعد

The Anguish of Distance

1. Alas for the lover’s heart, when it must bear,
   after the days of nearness, distance and its pain!
2. Along the roads of sorrow I walk, and drop anchor,
   and burn upon the embers of deprivation’s flame.
3. I send my sighs out through the nights, and the wound of distance
   makes my ribs bleed, and all my being.
4. The memories of love stir sorrows up
   within my heart, time and time again.
5. Those days when we were (do not ask¹ how we were!)
   gathering joy upon the banks where safety reigned;
6. those days when we saw all existence as a spring,
   a fragrance roaming through the gardens, lane to lane;
7. and both of us, beneath the bower, sang
   to nature’s beauty, in all its finery arrayed,
8. and from the topmost branches the nightingale
   sang out a dewy, mind-enchanting strain.
9. We poured each other chaste love to drink, and sipped
   the wine of union², with no wine-jars to drain.
10. And our ardours whispered to each other,
    brimming, surging through our souls like waves.
11. We poured our whispers into the rose’s mouth:
    a dream, a dancing tune, drunk on the meanings it contained.
12. Then we would doze a little, then wake up
    on the bed of dreams, the cradle where our hopes had lain;
13. then play, both free, among the meadows,
    and whisper to the smiling mouths of camomile³.
14. My love hides from me behind a thicket
    of dense trees in the garden.
15. I steal my steps up, stealthily, without a whisper,
    as I draw near the reach of her bewitching arms,
16. and she runs off, and the ring of laughter flows
    from lips where crimson dew has lain,
17. peals of laughter, like so many songs
    the echoes gave back in a melodic refrain.
18. Among the green hills I see her like a gazelle
    that sways along in splendour and allure.
19. Then, after all the chase, she comes towards me,
    coquettish, swaying like the gazelles upon the plain,
20. and draws me close, rib to rib, into her keeping;
    and sweet is the embrace, a solace to one who suffers.
21. How great my passion! How my heart aches
    for her perfumed and languid⁴ fragrance!
22. She filled me to the brim with the first, finest wine⁵ of her fruit,
    and after it, the dregs of sorrow were all that remained.
23. She held me captive for a while with the wine of union,
    then turned away, and vanished, and was nowhere to be seen.
24. I do not know, and the beloved has her coquetry⁶:
    is this delay of hers mere coquetry and feigned disdain?
25. Her memory came back to my heart, and it wished
    the old days would return, or time turn back again.
26. And the calls of my heart rose up from me,
    for it is a heart in love, brimming with its own beating.
27. Ah, woe is me, my love! How many wounds I suffer,
    wounds in which my heart goes sinking deep!
28. Truly I have tasted bitterness and torment
    from separation’s fire, and estrangement’s pain.
29. At night I am held by sleeplessness and brooding,
    and both my sides are branded by their blaze.
30. I chew on illusion, while fancies come in throngs,
    one after another, through my love-crazed brain.
31. Thwarted is whoever trusts in fancies, as I do,
    roaming the pastures of sorrow, all in vain.
32. And the lovely morning is strangled by the night,
    and turns into what seems a mass of smoke.
33. And life’s smile has turned away in gloom
    into misfortune’s dark, from all that I sustain.
34. Care has hanged the smile of happiness. Woe is me,
    so heavy of heart after such rapture!
35. And my time⁷, which was once so kind to me,
    has drawn its sword today, to strike.
36. If only I could now go back
    to that time, so shady and so thick with leaves,
37. or could bring back an age
    that has passed away and left me hopes that still remain!
38. And of hopes, some are impossible, and some
    make a man taste humiliation’s pain.

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