سلامًا

لا تفطميني عن هواك حبيبتي
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
سَلَامٌ عَلَى مَنْ لَا أُطِيقُ هَوَاهَاسَلَامُ مُحِبٍّ مُكْتَوٍ بِلَظَاهَا
أَقُولُ سَلَامًا وَهْوَ زَفْرَةُ وَاجِدٍوَأَنَّةُ مُشْتَاقٍ لِيَوْمِ لِقَاهَا
تَجُوبُ رِيَاضَ الْكَوْنِ تَسْتَافُ عَاطِرًامِنَ الزَّهْرِ مَزْهُوًّا يَفُوحُ شَذَاهَا
وَتَمْتَصُّ مِنْ كُلِّ الزُّهُورِ رَحِيقَهَاوَتَشْتَارُ مِنْ كُلِّ الْوُرُودِ نَدَاهَا
تَهُبُّ نَسِيمًا فَوْقَ كُلِّ خَمِيلَةٍعَلَى الْأَرْضِ تَطْوِي سَهْلَهَا وَرُبَاهَا
وَتَرْكَبُ مَتْنَ السُّحْبِ وَهْيَ مَوَاطِرٌعَلَى رَوْضَةِ اللُّقْيَا تَزِيدُ نَمَاهَا
تَسِيرُ مَعَ الرَّقْرَاقِ مِنْ كُلِّ جَدْوَلٍوَكُلِّ نَمِيرٍ سَلْسَلٍ يَتَبَاهَى
وَتَخْلِسُ مِنْ شَمْسِ النَّهَارِ شُعَاعَهَاوَتَلْبَسُ مِنْهَا دِفْئَهَا وَضِيَاهَا
وَمِنْ ذَلِكَ الْبَدْرِ الْمُتِمِّ بَهَاؤُهُوَسِحْرُ رُؤَاهُ يَسْتَحِثُّ سُرَاهَا
وَمِنْ رَوْعَةِ الْإِشْرَاقِ عِزُّ جَلَالِهَاوَمِنْ فِتْنَةِ الْآصَالِ سِحْرُ سَنَاهَا
فَحَتَّى إِذَا جَاءَتْ إِلَيْهَا جَثَتْ لَهَاتُقَبِّلُ خَدًّا ثُمَّ تَلْثِمُ فَاهَا
تَقُولُ لَهَا هَذِي رِسَالَةُ عَاشِقٍطَغَى حُبُّهُ فِي قَلْبِهِ وَتَنَاهَى
وَطَارَ لَذِيذُ النَّوْمِ عَنْ عَيْنِهِ جَوًىكَأَنَّ شَقِيًّا قَدْ مَضَى بِكَرَاهَا
وَلَيْسَ لَهُ شَيْءٌ يُسَلِّيهِ مَا سِوَىطُيُوفٍ لِمَنْ يَهْوَى يَلَذُّ رُؤَاهَا
فَجُودِي لَهُ يَوْمًا وَزُورِيهِ مَرَّةًوَسُرِّي لَهُ نَفْسًا يَعِزُّ عَنَاهَا

A Greeting of Peace1

  1. Peace be upon the one whose love is more than I can bear:
    the greeting of a lover branded by her blaze.
  2. I say “Peace”, and it is a burning lover's sigh,
    the moan of one who longs for her, and for their meeting day.
  3. It2 roams the gardens of the universe, and breathes the scent
    of every proud and fragrant flower, and spreads its own bouquet.
  4. It draws the nectar out of every blossom there,
    and gathers, as the bee takes honey3, every rose's dew.
  5. It blows, a breeze4, above each thicket on the earth,
    and folds its plains and hills up5 as it runs its race.
  6. It rides upon the backs of clouds that shed their rain
    upon the meadow of our meeting, swelling its green array.
  7. It travels with the shimmering water of each brook,
    and every clear, sweet, rippling stream that flows in proud display.
  8. It steals its rays out of the daytime sun,
    and puts its warmth and brilliance on, a garment made of day.
  9. It takes from that full moon as well, whose splendour is complete,
    and the magic of whose face spurs on its night-long way6.
  10. From the wonder of the sunrise comes its glorious majesty;
    from the spell of late afternoons, the magic of its ray.
  11. And when at last it reaches her, it kneels before her there,
    and kisses first a cheek, and then it presses its lips to her mouth.
  12. It tells her: “Here's the message of a lover in whose heart
    love rose in flood, and overflowed, and filled its farthest space.
  13. Sweet sleep has flown out of his eyes in love's consuming fever,
    as if some wretch had come and carried all his sleep away.
  14. And nothing is left to solace him but phantoms7
    of the one he loves, a sweet sight when they come his way.
  15. So be generous to him one day, and visit him just once,
    and gladden a soul whose suffering is hard to bear.”

Notes

  1. Salām means both 'peace' and the greeting 'Peace be upon you'. The poem opens with the formula salāmun ʿalā ('peace be upon'), and the whole poem follows the greeting as it travels, as a messenger, to the beloved. ↩
  2. In the Arabic the traveller is feminine and is not named. The nearest candidates are the greeting itself, treated as a message sent on its way, and the 'sigh' and 'moan' of verse 2, both feminine nouns, which the greeting is said to be. From verse 12 it speaks as the bearer of 'the message of a lover'. 'It' is kept throughout so that the English, like the Arabic, leaves greeting and sigh fused together. ↩
  3. Tashtāru is used of taking honey from the hive. The greeting gathers the flowers' dew as a bee gathers honey, so that it arrives laden with sweetness. ↩
  4. Sending greetings by the breeze, especially the east wind (ṣabā), is an old convention of Arabic love poetry: the wind carries the lover's salutations and sighs to the distant beloved and brings back her fragrance. Here the greeting becomes that breeze, then a rain cloud, a stream, sunlight and moonlight in turn. ↩
  5. Ṭawā al-arḍ, 'to fold up the land', means to cross it swiftly, as though distances were rolled up like a cloth. The idiom is used of fast journeys and of miraculous travel. ↩
  6. Surā is travel by night, the journey of the classical night rider. The full moon lights the way and its beauty urges the traveller on. ↩
  7. Ṭayf (plural ṭuyūf) is the phantom of the beloved that visits the lover in sleep or reverie, a central motif of classical Arabic love poetry. Since sleep has deserted him, the phantoms that comfort him are waking visions. ↩

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