من طلعة البدر أبهى

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
مِنْ طَلْعَةِ الْبَدْرِ أَبْهَىوَمِنْ جَنَى الْكَرْمِ أَشْهَى
هَلَّتْ فَحَلَّتْ فُؤَادِيوَعَنْ سِوَاهَا تَلَهَّى
أَوَّاهِ مِمَّا رَمَتْنِيمِنْ كُلِّ مَا كَانَ أَدْهَى
مَرَّتْ فَرَقَّ نَسِيمٌوَكُلُّ غُصْنٍ تَزَهَّى
وَكُلَّمَا قُلْتُ: أَنْسَىأَتَى خَيَالٌ فَأَلْهَى
لَا تَسْأَلُونِي سُلُوًّافَمَا الْمَحَبَّةُ تُنْهَى
مَا عُدْتُ أَطْلُبُ بُرْءًافَجُرْحُ حُبِّكِ يُشْهَى

Lovelier Than the Full Moon Rising

  1. Lovelier than the full moon rising,
    sweeter than the fruit of the vine,
  2. she dawned, and came to dwell within my heart1,
    and it turned away from all but her.
  3. Ah, for all that she has shot at me,
    of all things the most ruinous, the most cunning in design2!
  4. She passed, and a breeze grew gentle,
    and every bough preened itself.
  5. And every time I said, “I will forget,”
    a phantom came and turned my mind away.
  6. Do not ask me to be consoled:
    love is not a thing that ends.
  7. I no longer seek a cure:
    the wound of your love3 is one for which I pine.

Notes

  1. Hallat fa-ḥallat: hallat is used of the new moon appearing (hilāl, ‘crescent’), and ḥallat means ‘she alighted, took up dwelling’. The two verbs differ only in their first letter (jinās). She appears like the moon of verse 1 and at once settles in his heart. ↩
  2. Adhā means ‘most calamitous’ and also ‘most cunning’: what she shoots at him (glances, charms) is both devastating and artful. ↩
  3. Only in the last verse is the beloved addressed directly (‘your love’), after being spoken of throughout; the sudden ‘you’ (iltifāt) brings her close at the moment the lover embraces his wound. ↩

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