يا صديقي

Notes

1. Mubtadaʾ and khabar are the two parts of the Arabic nominal sentence. The mubtadaʾ (literally 'that with which one begins') is the subject; the khabar (literally 'news, report') is the predicate that completes it. Both senses are meant at once (tawriya): the friend's confession is only a subject still waiting for its predicate, only the beginning, and the khabar is the news still to come, how this love will end. Kayfa bī minka ('how will I fare with you?') voices affectionate anxiety rather than a real question. ↩
2. Saḥar is the last part of the night, just before dawn. An old belief in Arab and Islamic tradition holds that dreams seen at this hour are the truest and come to pass. The concession is both consolation and gentle irony. Ḥulm also means a fond hope, so the infatuation itself is the 'dream'. ↩
3. Both questions are rhetorical, expressing astonishment and rebuke; they expect no answer. The eyes 'see what cannot be seen', a love that is not there. The heart revives mā indathar, 'what has been effaced', a word used of ruined, wind-swept traces; here it is the passion of a youth long gone. ↩
4. Khayāl (also ṭayf) is the phantom of the beloved, a central motif of classical Arabic love poetry. Her image visits the lover by night, in sleep or waking reverie, and he holds munājāt with it, intimate whispered talk. The lovers dared not breathe or look away for fear the vision would vanish. ↩
5. The subject is the season (ʿahd) of youth from verse 4: has it returned mukhtalisan, stealthily, like a thief slipping in? ʿAhd means both 'era' and 'pledge', so the returning season 'renews the ʿahd': it brings the old days back and renews the old lovers' pledge, laying bare a passion long hidden. The question is ironic: has youth really come back to a greying man? ↩
6. Umlūd describes a young woman who is soft, supple and slender, likened to a tender green branch that bends easily. The demonstrative hādhihi ('this') points at her with a touch of reproach: this girl, of all people. ↩
7. Yaḥlumu ṭayshan wa-shararan, literally 'he dreams recklessness and sparks': the young man's very dreams are rashness and fire, the sparks of hot blood that flare and die quickly. The verb 'dream' echoes verse 2, setting the grey-haired friend's dream against the young man's. ↩
8. Tamtaṭī means 'she mounts', as one mounts a steed. Ṣabāba is ardent, yearning love; ghurar (plural of ghurra, the white blaze on a horse's brow) means the brightest and finest of anything. Young love is pictured as giddy, weightless flight in heights the older man cannot reach. ↩
9. The question is ironic. Tusdī ('you offer, you bestow') is addressed to the friend: if she did come, all he could give her is wisdom that age (al-ʿumr) has cast into sermons (ʿiẓāt) and lessons (ʿibar), while a girl on that swing wants sparks, not sermons. There is quiet advice in it too: counsel, not courtship, is what now suits him. ↩