كالنور

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
كَالنُّورِ سَاطِعَةً حَلَّتْ عَلَى حُلُمِينَضَّاخَةُ النَّهْدِ صَبَّتْ شَهْدَهَا بِفَمِي
مَا أَفْصَحَتْ أَعْيُنٌ عَنْ وَجْدِ صَاحِبِهَاكَمِثْلِ أَعْيُنِهَا، قَلْبِي بِهِنَّ رُمِي
أَشْتَاتُ مَا شَعَرَتْ فِي قَلْبِهَا جُمِعَتْفِي طَرْفِهَا وَشَجًى فِي صَوْتِهَا الرَّنِمِ
وَأَصْبَحَ الشَّهْدُ مَعْقُودًا عَلَى فَمِهَامُبَلْسَمًا وَاسْتَبَدَّ الْوَجْدُ بِالْعَنَمِ

Like Light

  1. Radiant as light, she came down upon my dream,
    full-breasted1, and she poured her honey in my mouth.
  2. No eyes have ever spoken out their owner’s passion
    as her eyes did; by them my heart was shot2.
  3. The scattered feelings of her heart were gathered
    in her glance, and a plaintive ache in her melodious strain.
  4. And the honey lay thickened on her mouth,
    a balm; and passion seized her fingertips, red as ʿanam3’s stain.

Notes

  1. Naḍḍākhat al-nahd: naḍḍākha means ‘gushing, brimming’, a word the Qur’an uses of two springs of Paradise (55:66). Here it speaks of the fullness of her breast. ↩
  2. Rumiya, ‘was shot’: the beloved’s glances are arrows, a classical image, and her eyes are the archers that have struck his heart. ↩
  3. ʿAnam is a tree with soft, bright-red shoots, to which classical poets likened red lips and hennaed fingertips; here it names her hennaed fingertips, whose red carries the flush of passion. Maʿqūd, ‘thickened’, is used of honey or syrup boiled until it sets. ↩

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