أألقاكِ

Shall I Meet You?

1. Shall I meet you one day, after the distance, somewhere down the years,
   or have you grown more distant from our meeting than a dream by day?
2. Can I hope for a meeting, after all the life that’s passed,
   while the days keep death concealed from us along the way?
3. Far, far off that is, to reason; and yet, to one like me,
   nothing is far away.
4. I see the dawn erase the darkness from my heart,
   and the light of gladness rising there, rose-tinted, into day.
5. I see you stretching out your arms in longing for my embrace,
   like one who has been kept in chains for ages.
6. You clasp my breast, or I draw you close to it,
   and the burden of care that wore me out breaks up and falls away.
7. I crouch in lowliness before your love, and what a height it is¹,
   a height that soars beyond all that has come to view!
8. I play my poems to the melody of our love,
   and you sing it in a whisper, like the finest who ever sang.
9. My heart recalled a night: so you recall it too!
   How often a memory can lead us back to the right way!
10. I met you on that night without our having planned it,
    though in my soul the path to it had long been smoothly laid.
11. And there you whispered to me, in a voice dear to the soul,
    and the echo kept repeating the whispered words you’d say.
12. How often did we gather, with chastity our watchman,
    the low-hanging clusters² of love, in tenderness!
13. And how often did we tell, between our tears and longing,
    the tales of our two hearts, and of a love in harm’s way!
14. We spoke of dreams upon that night of bliss;
    whenever a full moon set, you were my Farqad³ in its stead.
15. And when, once, we had promised each other we would meet,
    and you had named a day, and then a fixed hour of the day,
16. the enemy of love came and tore us apart,
    and since that day my body has not known a bed.
17. I am the faithful one, forever wasting⁴ in your love,
    and your love has wearied my heart and worn it all away.
18. Do you remember the promise? I remember, and I wait
    for that tomorrow still, even to this day.
19. When will you keep it, my beloved? Or, for all the love
    for me that is in you, have you made yourself forget⁵ our appointed day?

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