عصارة اليأس

عبير الأبد
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
يَا خَالِقِي لَسْتُ أَدْرِي كُنْهَ تَكْوِينِينَفْسِي تَضِجُّ وَنَارُ الْحُبِّ تَكْوِينِي
أَيْقَنْتُ أَنَّكَ مَوْجُودٌ فَوَا لَهَفِيمَتَى أَرَاكَ مَتَى أَسْمُو عَنِ الطِّينِ
لَقَدْ سَئِمْتُ مِنَ الدُّنْيَا وَزُخْرُفِهَاوَلَيْسَ لِي أَمَلٌ فِيهَا فَيُحْيِينِي
يَكْفِي مِنَ الْيَأْسِ مَا قَدْ غَصَّ فِي حَلْقِيفَلَيْسَ بِي غَيْرُ قَلْبٍ جِدِّ مَحْزُونِ
دُنْيَا وَأَبْحَثُ عَنْ جَدْوَى الْحَيَاةِ بِهَامَا بَيْنَ مُعْتَرَكِ الْعَلْيَاءِ وَالدُّونِ
فِي كُلِّ دَرْبٍ أَرَى شَوْكاً يُهَدِّدُنِيوَأَسْمَعُ الْعَصْفَ فِي كُلِّ الْمَيَادِينِ
وَأَزْرَعُ الْحُبَّ كَيْ أَمْشِي عَلَى زَهَرٍفَلَا أَرَى جَانِبِي غَيْرَ السَّكَاكِينِ
الزَّهْرُ عِنْدِيَ أَشْوَاكٌ وَنَفْحَتُهَاكَلَفْحَةِ النَّارِ تَكْوِينِي وَتَصْلِينِي
وَالنُّورُ عِنْدِي ظَلَامٌ دَامِسٌ أَبَداًفِيهِ الشُّعَاعُ كَأَشْبَاحِ الشَّيَاطِينِ
وَأَنْدُبُ الْحَظَّ فِي أَمْسِي فَيَغْمُرُنِيظَلَامُ يَوْمِي وَفِي الْحِرْمَانِ يَرْمِينِي
فَكَمْ تَرَقَّبْتُ أَنْسَاماً لِتُنْعِشَنِيفَمَا تَهُبُّ سِوَى رِيحِ الْخَمَاسِينِ
هَلْ مِنْ شُرُوقٍ لِشَمْسٍ بِتُّ أَرْقُبُهَاأَمْ قَدْ طَوَاهَا الَّذِي قَدْ ظَلَّ يَطْوِينِي
يَا خَالِقِي رَحْمَةً فِي الْقَلْبِ تُنْزِلُهَاأَدْعُوكَ يَا رَبِّ فَلْتُخْمِدْ بَرَاكِينِي

مقديشو — 8/8/1987م

Despair, Distilled1

  1. O my Creator, I cannot fathom how I came to be;
    my soul is in uproar, and the fire of love is branding me2.
  2. I know for certain You exist — and oh, how I yearn!
    When shall I see You? When shall I rise above the clay3?
  3. I have grown weary of this world and all its glitter,
    and I have no hope in it that might revive me.
  4. Enough despair has lodged already in my throat!
    Nothing is left in me but a heart in deepest misery.
  5. A world, and in it I search for the worth of life,
    amid the fray between the lofty and the lowly.
  6. On every path I see thorns that threaten me,
    and in every field I hear the tempest’s fury.
  7. I sow love, so that I might walk on flowers,
    yet nothing but knives do I see on either side of me.
  8. Flowers, to me, are thorns, and their waft of scent
    is like a blast of fire4, branding me and roasting me.
  9. And light, to me, is darkness, pitch-black, without end,
    in which the rays are like the ghosts of devils, to me.
  10. I mourn my luck in days gone by; my present’s darkness
    engulfs me, and flings me into deprivation.
  11. How often have I waited for a breeze to bring me back to life,
    and nothing blows except the khamsin5!
  12. Is there a sunrise for a sun I’ve watched for, night on night?
    Or has it been folded up6 by what keeps folding me?
  13. O my Creator, send a mercy down into my heart!
    I call on You, my Lord: quench the volcanoes in me.

Mogadishu, 8 August 1987

Notes

  1. ʿUṣāra is the juice pressed out of fruit, the concentrated essence of a thing. The title presents the poem as what despair yields when it is squeezed to the last drop. ↩
  2. The verse rhymes takwīnī (‘my making, my formation’, from kawwana, to bring into being) with takwīnī (‘it brands me’, from kawā, to cauterise, sear). The two words are identical in sound and different in meaning, a perfect pun (jinās tāmm): the question of how he was created meets the fire that is burning him. ↩
  3. Ṭīn, clay, is the stuff from which, in the Qur’an, God created Adam. To ‘rise above the clay’ is to transcend the body and earthly life, and so to be able to see God. ↩
  4. Nafḥa, a waft of fragrance, is set against lafḥa, the scorching blast of a fire: two words that differ in one letter (jinās). The scent that should delight him strikes him like flame. The printed text reads laḥfa, a wrap or covering, which would give ‘a mantle of fire’; the reading lafḥa is taken here. ↩
  5. The khamsin is a hot, dry, dust-laden wind that blows from the desert in spring, in Egypt and the Levant. Its name comes from khamsīn, ‘fifty’, after the fifty days or so of the year it is said to blow. Instead of the reviving breeze he waits for, only the scorching wind comes. ↩
  6. Ṭawā is to fold or roll up, as one rolls up a scroll or a garment. It is used of time and death that ‘fold people away’, and of distance ‘folded’ by a traveller. The poet sets the sun he is waiting for beside himself: the same unnamed power, fate or time, that keeps rolling him up may already have rolled up his sun. ↩

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