أباريق الهوى

Notes

1. The ibrīq, ewer, is the long-spouted vessel from which wine is poured in classical Arabic wine poetry (khamriyya). The poem borrows that tradition's whole vocabulary of ewers, cups, drunkenness and dawn to describe the beloved and her kisses. ↩
2. Qarqaf is one of the old poetic names for wine, said to be so called because it makes the drinker shiver (qarqafa). Poets of the wine tradition praised the ṣabūḥ, the morning draught drunk at dawn, which is why the ewers tempt him 'at dawn'. The last word of the verse, fanājīnī, is read as 'my cups' (plural of finjān), the object of 'poured'. The same letters also read fa-nājīnī, 'so whisper to me', an imperative to the beloved. The double sense (tawriya) lets the verse pass from the wine to the woman who is its real subject. ↩
3. The verse plays on the contrast (ṭibāq) between ṣaḥw, 'waking, sobriety', and sukr, 'drunkenness': she wakes him from sleep only to intoxicate him. Yuhādīnī, 'rocks me', suggests both a swaying, leisurely motion and the giving of gifts. ↩
4. Ḥumayyā is the heat and first strength of wine as it rises to the head; it comes from the root of ḥamiya, 'to grow hot', which reappears in tuḥmā, 'it grows hot'. Marāshif, 'lips' (literally 'places of sipping'), and rāshaftuhā, 'I sipped with her, each from the other', are likewise from one root. The repetitions tie the wine, the lips and the burning together. Takwīnī, 'brands me', is the verb for searing with a hot iron. ↩
5. Tishrīn is the name of two autumn months, October and November, in the calendar used in Syria, Iraq and neighbouring lands. The poet sets her breathing and her body to the rhythm of this season of first rains and cool winds. ↩
6. The rhetorical question dismisses the sunrise: the only morning that matters to him is her face. Her announcement that day has come, which should end the night of love, is thus waved aside. ↩