يرى الناس عيبًا

لا تفطميني عن هواك حبيبتي
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
يَرَى النَّاسُ عَيْبًا أَنْ يُحِبُّوا وَيَعْشَقُواوَأَنْ يُظْهِرُوا اللَّوْعَاتِ وَالْقَلْبُ يُحْرَقُ
وَإِنِّي أُبَاهِي فِي الْأَنَامِ بِحُبِّنَاوَأُبْدِي لَهُمْ أَنِّي إِلَيْكِ مُشَوَّقُ
وَأَسْأَلُ عُشَّاقًا تَفَانَوْا بِحُبِّهِمْفَصَارُوا شُمُوسًا فِي سَمَا الْحُبِّ تُشْرِقُ
أَيَقْوَى عَلَى كَتْمِ الْمَحَبَّةِ عَاشِقٌيَكَادُ إِلَى الْمَحْبُوبِ شَوْقًا يُمَزَّقُ
فَقَالُوا: «مُحَالٌ أَنْ يَكُونَ فُؤَادُهُمُحِبًّا وَيَخْفَى مَا بِهِ يَتَحَرَّقُ
وَإِلَّا فَدَعْوَى يَدَّعِيهَا وَلَا نَرَىكَذَلِكَ فِي دَعْوَى الْمَحَبَّةِ يَصْدُقُ»

ممباسا – كينيا
يناير ١٩٩٢م

People Think It Shameful

  1. People think it shameful to love, to be passionately in love,
    and to show their pangs of love while the heart is on fire.
  2. But I take pride before all mankind in our love,
    and show them how I long for you.
  3. And I ask lovers who wasted away in their love1
    and so became suns, rising in love's sky, ever higher:
  4. “Can any lover keep his love concealed
    when longing for the one he loves all but tears him apart?”
  5. And they said: “It is impossible for one to love
    and hide the fire that burns within his heart.
  6. Otherwise it is a claim2 he makes; and in a claim
    of love like that, we do not see him speaking true.”

Mombasa, Kenya, January 1992

Notes

  1. Tafānaw, 'they wasted away, annihilated themselves', evokes the ʿUdhrī lovers of Arabic tradition, such as Majnūn Laylā and Jamīl Buthayna, who were consumed by love and died of it, and who became legends, the 'suns' of love. The word also carries the Sufi sense of fanāʾ, self-effacement in the beloved. ↩
  2. Daʿwā, a 'claim', is a legal term: a claim that must be proved by evidence. It was a commonplace of Arabic love poetry and of Sufism that love is proved by its signs, tears, sleeplessness, wasting, and that a love with no signs is an empty claim, as in the famous line: 'Everyone claims union with Laylā.' The lovers' verdict justifies the poet in showing his love openly. ↩

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