أَيَحُقُّ لِي تَقْبِيلُ ثَغْرِكِ كُلَّمَانَطَقَ الْجَمَالُ بِهِ سَنًى وَتَبَسَّمَا
مُتَلَذِّذًا بِشِفَاهِهِ مُتَرَشِّفًابِلِسَانِهِ مُتَلَطِّفًا وَمُلَمْلِمَا
مُسْتَعْذِبًا عَذَبَاتِهِ وَرُضَابَهُبَلْ كُلَّمَا رَوَّيْتُ زَادَ بِيَ الظَّمَا!
May I?
- May I kiss your mouth, each time that beauty speaks
through it in radiance, and it breaks into a smile, - savouring its lips, and sipping from its tongue,
tenderly, and gathering it in all the while, - relishing the sweetness of its tongue-tips and its honeyed dew1?
And yet the more I drink, the more my thirst grows wild!
Notes
- Mustaʿdhiban ʿadhabātihi plays on one root: mustaʿdhib is ‘finding sweet’, and ʿadhabāt (tips, especially of the tongue) sounds like ʿadhb, ‘sweet’. Ruḍāb, the beloved’s saliva, is a standard term of classical love poetry, praised as sweeter than honey or wine. The final paradox, a drink that only deepens thirst, is a familiar figure for desire that cannot be sated. ↩
English translation prepared by artificial intelligence and reviewed against the Arabic for accuracy of meaning and rhetoric.