صبية من صبايا الحور

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
صَبِيَّةٌ مِنْ صَبَايَا الْحُورِ أَنْتِ وَفِيحِوَارِ عَيْنَيْكِ مَا يُغْنِي ذَوِي الشَّغَفِ
فَبَيْنَ جَنْبَيْكِ أَفْرَاحٌ مُزَغْرِدَةٌوَبَيْنَ جَفْنَيْكِ أَسْرَارٌ مِنَ اللَّهَفِ
الطَّرْفُ مِنْكِ طُفُولِيٌّ .. وَنَظْرَتُهُتُخْفِي إِشَارَاتِ حُبٍّ غَيْرِ مُنْصَرِفِ
إِبْحَارُ قَلْبِي بِهِ مِنْ غَيْرِ مَا سُفُنٍوَلَا شِرَاعٍ سِوَى مَا فِيهِ مِنْ كَلَفِ
كَمْ مِنْ لَآلِئَ كَانَتْ قَبْلُ خَافِيَةًكَشَفْتِ لِي فَنَأَتْ عَنْ مِحْوَرِ الصَّدَفِ
وَصُدْفَةً كَانَ لُقْيَانَا ..فَكَانَ هَوًىوَكَمْ قُطُوفٍ جَنَاهَا الْقَلْبُ بِالصُّدَفِ

A Maiden of the Houris1

  1. You are a maiden of the houris1, and in your eyes' converse
    lies all that can suffice for those who love too well.
  2. Within your breast are joys that ululate2,
    and in your lids lie secrets of a yearning none can tell.
  3. Your glance is a child's glance, and yet its gaze conceals
    the signals of a love that never turns away3.
  4. My heart sets out to sea upon it, though it has no ship,
    no sail but the ardour that within it dwells.
  5. How many pearls, till then concealed, you have laid bare for me,
    so that they left the hollow of their shell!4
  6. By chance it was we met, and so came love;
    and how many clusters the heart has gathered by chance!4

Notes

  1. The ḥūr are the maidens of Paradise in the Qur'an. The word comes from ḥawar, the striking contrast of deep black iris and clear white in a beautiful eye, so it already speaks of eyes. The poet sets al-ḥūr beside ḥiwār, 'dialogue, converse', a near-identical word (jinās): hers are eyes that converse, and their silent talk is enough for any lover. ↩
  2. Muzaghrida, from zaghrada, the high, trilling ululation with which women greet a wedding or other joyful news. Her inner happiness is pictured as a festive chorus. The verse is built as a matched pair (muqābala): 'within your breast' (literally 'between your sides') and 'between your eyelids', joys and secrets. ↩
  3. Ghayr munṣarif, 'not turning away', is also the grammarians' term for a noun that does not take the full set of case endings. The phrase thus says that her love does not waver or turn aside, and at the same time plays on grammar, as if her love were a word that keeps its form whatever position it is put in. ↩
  4. Verses 5 and 6 are linked by a play on words. Al-ṣadaf is the oyster shell in which pearls lie hidden; ṣudfa, plural ṣudaf, is 'chance'. The pearls she has drawn out of their shell are the hidden joys and secrets she has revealed to him, and the love itself came about by ṣudfa, by chance. The final word of verse 6, al-ṣudaf ('chances'), echoes al-ṣadaf ('the shell') at the end of verse 5, so that the lucky meeting seems itself a pearl found in a shell. ↩

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