أغار عليك

لا تفطميني عن هواك حبيبتي
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
أَغَارُ عَلَيْكِ مِنْ هَمْسِ الْجُفُونِوَمِنْ نَجْوَى الْعُيُونِ إِلَى الْعُيُونِ
وَمِنْ نَبْضِ الْفُؤَادِ وَمِنْ خَيَالِيوَمِنْ هَمْسِي الْمُجَنَّحِ بِالْحَنِينِ
وَمِنْ وَحْيِ الشُّعُورِ وَمِنْ زُهُورٍتُنَاجِي الطَّرْفَ بِالْهَمْسِ الْحَنُونِ
وَمِنْ نَايِي وَمِنْ قِيثَارِ لَحْنِيوَمِنْ نَغَمَاتِ مِزْهَرِيَ الْحَزِينِ
وَمِنْ شِعْرِي وَمِنْ كُرَّاسِ نَثْرِينَدِيمِ الشَّجْوِ مُنْطَلِقِ الْفُنُونِ
وَمِنْ بَدْرِ السَّمَاءِ إِذَا تَنَاغَىمَعَ الْحُسْنِ الْمُنَقَّبِ بِالْفُتُونِ
وَتَغْرِيدِ الْبَلَابِلِ حِينَ تَشْدُوبِلَحْنِ الْحُبِّ مِنْ فَوْقِ الْغُصُونِ
فَتُبْدِعُ فِي الْهَوَى أَحْلَى الْأَغَانِيلِتَأْسِرَ مِنْكِ مَنْطِقَةَ اللُّحُونِ
وَمِنْ حُلُمِي إِذَا شَاهَدْتُ فِيهِخَيَالًا مِنْكِ مُنْشَرِحَ الْجَبِينِ
وَمِنْ طَيْفِي إِذَا مَا جَاءَ يَسْعَىبِجُنْحِ اللَّيْلِ فِي شَوْقٍ دَفِينِ
لِكَيْ يَلْقَاكِ فِي مَهْدِ الْأَمَانِيوَيَطْوِيَ بُعْدَ مَا بَيْنَ السِّنِينِ
غَبَطْتُ الْقَلْبَ أَنْ يَهْوَاكِ حَتَّىحَسِبْتُ هَوَايَ نَوْعًا مِنْ جُنُونِي
وَبَادَلْتُ الْفُؤَادَ هَوًى وَشَوْقًافَكَانَ الْوَصْلُ خَاتِمَةَ الشُّئُونِ
سَقَتْ عَيْنَاكِ أَوْصَالِي خُمُورًامُعَتَّقَةً كَيَنْبُوعٍ مَعِينِ
ثَمِلْتُ بِهَا فَصِرْتُ بِلَا شُعُورٍسِوَى مَا بِي مِنَ السُّكْرِ الْمُبِينِ
هَوَاكِ هُوَ الْحَقِيقَةُ فِي حَيَاتِيوَمُعْتَقَدِي بِذِي الدُّنْيَا وَدِينِي
أُجَاهِرُ بِالْهَوَى وَأَكَادُ أُخْفِيبِإِعْلَانِي عَنِ السِّرِّ الْمَصُونِ
فَيَنْشُلُنِي مِنَ الْأَوْهَامِ حَتَّىأَعِيشَ الْحُبَّ فِي عَيْنِ الْيَقِينِ
وَأَنْفِي عَنْ هَوَانَا أَيَّ رَيْبٍلِنَحْيَا فِي رُبَى حُبٍّ مَكِينِ
رُوَيْدَكِ إِنَّ هَذَا الْقَلْبَ وَاهٍوَلَا يَقْوَى عَلَى مُرِّ الْأَنِينِ
وَأَخْشَى أَنْ تُفَاجِئَنِي اللَّيَالِيبِعَصْفِ الرِّيحِ مِنْ بَعْدِ السُّكُونِ
وَأَنْ أَضْحَى عَلَى قَفْرٍ جَدِيبٍبُعَيْدَ الْخِصْبِ وَالْعَيْشِ السَّمِينِ
أَخَافُ أَخَافُ مِنْ دُنْيَا ذِئَابٍوَمِنْ أَنْيَابِ ذَا الدَّهْرِ الْخَئُونِ
وَمِنْ أَمْوَاجِ بَحْرٍ عَاتِيَاتٍيَهُدُّ عُتُوُّهَا خُشُبَ السَّفِينِ
وَمِنْ مَحْلٍ تَشِحُّ بِهِ سَمَاءٌتَسُحُّ الْآنَ بِالْمَطَرِ الْهَتُونِ
أَخَافُ إِذَا تَبَاعَدَتِ اللَّيَالِيوَخَانَ الدَّهْرُ أَنْ لَا تَذْكُرِينِي
فَهَلْ أَصْحُو مِنَ الْأَحْلَامِ يَوْمًالِأَلْقَى الْحُبَّ بَعْضًا مِنْ ظُنُونِي؟

ممباسا – كينيا
1994م

Jealous Over You1

  1. I'm jealous over you: of whispering lids,
    and of the secret talk of eyes with eyes, unseen;
  2. of my heart's beating, my imagination,
    and of the whispers longing sends on wing, my own;
  3. of feeling's inspiration, and of flowers
    that whisper to the gaze in tender undertone;
  4. of my reed flute, the lyre that bears my tune,
    and of the notes my sorrowing lute2 intones;
  5. of all my poems, and my book of prose,
    grief's boon companion3, roaming free through every art and line;
  6. of heaven's full moon, whenever it would croon
    to beauty veiled4 behind enchantment's screen;
  7. and of the warbling nightingales that sing
    love's melody from high among the green,
  8. and fashion, out of love, the sweetest songs
    to capture, in your heart, melody's domain5;
  9. and of my dream, when I behold in it
    an image of you, with your brow serene;
  10. and of my phantom6, when it comes in haste
    beneath night's wing, with longing buried deep within,
  11. to meet you in the cradle of all hopes,
    and fold away the distance of the years between.
  12. I envied7 my own heart for loving you, until
    I deemed my love a kind of madness, mine alone.
  13. I traded love and longing, heart with heart,
    and union was the seal on all that passed between.
  14. Your eyes have poured into my limbs a wine
    aged long8, like springs that flow and never drain.
  15. I grew so drunk on it I lost all feeling
    save for the drunkenness in me, plain to be seen.
  16. Your love is the one truth in all my life,
    my creed within this world, and my religion.
  17. I make my love known openly, and yet,
    by that declaring, all but hide9 the secret held within;
  18. and it snatches me from all illusion, till
    I live my love with the very eye of certainty10;
  19. and I drive every doubt out of our love,
    that we may live upon the hills of steadfast love.
  20. Go gently now! This heart of mine is frail,
    and lacks the strength to bear the bitter moan.
  21. I fear the nights may take me unawares
    with a blast of wind that follows on the calm,
  22. and I may find myself on barren waste
    so soon after the plenty and the fat years I have known.
  23. I am afraid, afraid, of a world of wolves,
    and of the fangs of Time11, the treacherous one;
  24. and of a sea whose raging waves rise high,
    whose violence can smash the timbers of the ships;
  25. and of a drought, when skies that pour today
    in torrents turn to misers of their rain12.
  26. I fear that, when the nights have drawn us far apart
    and Time turns traitor, you'll not think of me again.
  27. Shall I wake up one day from all my dreams
    to find that love was just a fancy13 of my own?

Mombasa, Kenya, 1994

Notes

  1. Aghāru ʿalayki min…: ghīra is the jealousy of one who guards what he loves. It is felt 'over' (ʿalā) the beloved and directed 'against' (min) whatever comes near her. The single verb that opens the poem governs the long list that follows, and the list grows ever more intimate: glances and eyes, then the poet's own heart, imagination, music, poetry, dream and phantom. By the end he is jealous even of himself. ↩
  2. The poet names three instruments: the nāy, the reed flute of Arabic and Sufi music; the qīthār, the lyre; and the mizhar, an old Arabic lute, often named in classical poetry among the delights of the gathering. ↩
  3. Nadīm is the companion at a drinking gathering. The prose notebook keeps company with his grief (shajw) as a boon companion keeps company with the drinker. Munṭaliq al-funūn, 'set loose in its arts', means that it ranges freely through every kind of writing. ↩
  4. Tanāghā is used of the fond, cooing talk of lovers, or of a mother with her baby. Al-ḥusn al-munaqqab bi-l-futūn is 'beauty that wears a veil (niqāb) of enchantment': the beloved's beauty, hidden and alluring at once. Even the moon's gentle conversation with her rouses the poet's jealousy. ↩
  5. Manṭiqat al-luḥūn, 'the region of melodies': the place in her heart where music lives, which the birds' songs set out to capture. ↩
  6. Ṭayf, the night phantom, is a stock motif of classical Arabic love poetry: the beloved's image visits the lover in sleep. Here the roles are reversed. It is the poet's own phantom that travels by night to visit her, and he is jealous of it because it will reach her before he does. ↩
  7. Ghabaṭtu: ghibṭa is envy without malice, the wish to have what another has without wishing him to lose it. The poet envies his own heart the privilege of loving her, and the paradox leads him to call his love a kind of madness. ↩
  8. The wine of the beloved's eyes is a classical image: her glance intoxicates like wine. Muʿattaqa is wine aged long in the jar, the finest kind, and maʿīn is water that flows from a spring and does not run dry; the phrase echoes the Qur'anic description of the wine of Paradise drawn 'from a flowing spring' (37:45; 56:18). ↩
  9. Akādu ukhfī, 'I all but conceal', echoes the Qur'anic verse on the Last Hour: 'The Hour is coming; I all but keep it hidden' (20:15). The paradox is deliberate: open declaration of love becomes itself a kind of concealment, for it proclaims the love and keeps the secret of the beloved guarded. ↩
  10. ʿAyn al-yaqīn, 'the eye of certainty', is a Qur'anic phrase (102:7) for the certainty of what one sees with one's own eyes, as against what one has only heard or inferred. ↩
  11. Al-dahr, 'Time' or 'Fate', is in Arabic poetry a treacherous power that turns fortunes upside down and parts friends and lovers. The poet gives it fangs, as he gives the world wolves. ↩
  12. The verse turns on a pun (jinās): tashiḥḥu, 'is miserly, withholds', and tasuḥḥu, 'pours down', differ only in one letter, shīn against sīn, which in Arabic script are the same shape with and without dots. The sky that gives freely now may withhold its rain tomorrow, as love may. ↩
  13. Ẓunūn are suppositions and fancies, things one guesses without being sure. The closing question sets them against the 'eye of certainty' of verse 18, and so ends the poem in the doubt that the lover had tried to drive away. ↩

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