أهواكِ

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
أَهْوَاكِ .. يَا عَبَقًا أَزْكَى تَضَمَّخَ فِيأَرْجَاءِ جِسْمِي وَرُوحِي فِيكِ تَلْتَئِمُ
مُنْذُ احْتَجَبْتِ شَكَا لِي الْحُبُّ غُرْبَتَهُوَأَنَّ شَوْقَكِ فِي الْوِجْدَانِ يَحْتَدِمُ
فَقُلْتُ لُذْ بِحِمَى الذِّكْرَى مُضَمَّخَةًمِنْ حَيْثُمَا لَمَسَتْ يَدٌ لَهَا وَفَمُ
مَا زَالَ فِي غَيْمَةِ الذِّكْرَى رَوَائِحُهَاتَظَلُّ تُمْطِرُنِي وَجْدًا فَأَضْطَرِمُ
فَكَيْفَ أَنْسَى حَدِيثًا بَثَّهُ عَبَقٌوَشَى بِهِ الشَّوْقُ أُنْسًا وَهْوَ يَبْتَسِمُ؟

I Love You

  1. I love you… O fragrance, purest of all, that has perfumed
    every part of my body, while in you my soul is mended.
  2. Since you withdrew from sight, Love has complained to me
    of how longing for you rages in my depths, and of its exile.
  3. And so I told it: “Take refuge in the sanctuary1 of memory,
    perfumed wherever her hand and her mouth have touched.”
  4. Her fragrances still linger in the cloud of memory,
    and keep on raining passion down on me, so that I burn2.
  5. So how can I forget the talk a fragrance breathed,
    which longing gave away3 as sweet intimacy, with a smile?

Notes

  1. Ḥimā is protected ground, a pasture or precinct guarded against intruders, where one who takes refuge is safe. Love, left homeless by the beloved's absence, is told to shelter in memory as in such a sanctuary. The poet turns here from addressing the beloved to speaking of her in the third person ('her hand and her mouth'). ↩
  2. The verse ends in a paradox: the cloud of memory rains on him, yet instead of cooling him the rain sets him burning (aḍṭarim, 'I blaze up'). ↩
  3. Washā bihi, 'gave it away, disclosed it', is the verb of the wāshī, the tale-bearer who spies on lovers and reveals their secret, a stock villain of Arabic love poetry. Here the tale-bearer is longing itself, and it betrays the lovers' secret not in malice but smiling, as a delight. ↩

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