كفّ محناة

Notes

1. Henna (ḥinnāʾ) is used by women in Somalia and across the Arab and Muslim world to dye the hands in patterns, especially for weddings and festive occasions; a hennaed hand is a sign of a bride or a woman adorned. The 'grass' she gathers is the hair on the man's chest, as the next verse makes plain. ↩
2. Verses 1 to 3 form one extended metaphor of cultivation. The chest is a field, its hair is grass and tufts of pasture (taʿāshīb), her fingers are feet walking through it, their steps rayyāna, moist and fresh like well-watered ground. She gathers ḥabb, 'grain', then waters the field with kisses and sows in it her ḥubb, 'love'. Ḥabb and ḥubb are written with the same letters and differ only in their vowel, a play (jinās) that makes the grain she gathers and the love she sows two forms of one thing. ↩
3. Arḍaʿathu libānahā, 'she suckled him with her milk'. Libān is the milk of the breast, and raḍīʿā libān, 'two nursed with the same milk', is an old expression for the closest of companions. The phrase says that this love has been his nourishment from the beginning, taken in as deeply as a child takes in its mother's milk. ↩
4. Tusāqīhi describes a shared round of drinking, each pouring for the other. Al-wiṣāl, 'union with the beloved', and awṣāl, 'limbs, joints', share their root and sound, so the cups of union answer to the fever running through her limbs. The rhyme-words of the whole poem (darbahā, ḥabbahā, ḥubbahā, nakhbahā, ḥarbahā, lubbahā) chime closely with one another, and the last, lubb, 'mind, inmost core', closes the chain. ↩