أوتار مبعثرة

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
أَرَانِي بَعْضَ أَوْتَارٍ مُبَعْثَرَةٍوَعُودًا مُهْمَلًا يَهْفُو لِفَنَّانِ
وَأَشْتَاتًا مِنَ الْأَنَّاتِ لَا أَدْرِيإِلَامَ تَظَلُّ تَشْكُونِي لِأَوْزَانِي
فُؤَادٌ لَمْ يَزَلْ بِالْحُسْنِ مَفْتُونًاوَمِلْءُ إِهَابِهِ آلَامُ أَحْزَانِ
فَمَنْ لِلْعُودِ مَنْ لِلْقَلْبِ يُسْعِدُهُيُلَمْلِمُهُ وَيُنْشِدُ بَعْضَ أَلْحَانِ
أَلَيْسَ بِحِضْنِكِ اجْتَمَعَتْ أَمَانِينَاأَلَيْسَ الْحُبُّ يَمْلَأُ صَدْرَكِ الْحَانِي؟
فَضُمِّينِي وَلُمِّي بَعْضَ أَشْتَاتِيوَغَنِّينِي فَلَيْسَ سِوَاكِ يَهْوَانِي

Scattered Strings1

  1. I see myself as a few scattered strings,
    a lute, neglected, yearning for a player's hand again,
  2. and scattered fragments of moaning; and I cannot say
    how long they will go on complaining of me to my metres2.
  3. A heart that beauty holds enthralled as ever,
    while all its skin3 can hold is sorrow's pain.
  4. Who, then, will tend the lute? Who'll cheer the heart,
    gather it up, and sing some melody, some strain?
  5. Is it not in your arms that all our hopes have met?
    Does not your tender breast4 hold all the love it can contain?
  6. So hold me close, and gather some of my scattered pieces up,
    and sing me5, for there is no one but you who loves me.

Notes

  1. This is the title poem of the collection Awtār Mubaʿthara, 'Scattered Strings'. Awtār are the strings of a musical instrument, here of the ʿūd, the Arab lute. The poet pictures himself as an instrument fallen apart and left unplayed. ↩
  2. Awzān are poetic metres, and also musical measures. The moans that are all that is left of him keep 'complaining of him' to his metres, as a grievance is laid before a judge: they press to be turned into verse. Grief is the source of his poems. ↩
  3. Ihāb is the hide or skin; 'the fill of its skin' means the whole of the heart, through and through. ↩
  4. The questions are affirmations in the form of questions (istifhām taqrīrī): she is being asked to acknowledge what both know to be true. Al-ḥānī, 'tender', which closes the verse, echoes alḥān, 'melodies', at the end of verse 4. ↩
  5. The last verse completes the image of the first. He is the lute that longs for a musician, and she is that musician: 'gather up my scattered pieces' answers the 'scattered strings' and 'scattered fragments', and 'sing me' asks her to play him as one plays an instrument and to make him into a song. ↩

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