ماذا عن الشوق؟

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
مَا حَالُ شَوْقِكِ؟ هَلْ ثَارَتْ لَوَاعِجُهُوَلَوَّحَتْ مِنْ حَنَايَا الْقَلْبِ نَجْوَاهُ؟
وَهَلْ تَحَمَّمْتِ فِي عِطْرِ الْجَوَى وَلَقَدْتَضَمَّخَ الْجَوُّ لَمَّا فَاحَ رَيَّاهُ؟
وَهَلْ دَعَتْكِ دَوَاعِيهِ لِتَنْطَلِقِيإِلَى الْحَبِيبِ الَّذِي تَفْدِيكِ عَيْنَاهُ؟
يُمْضِي اللَّيَالِي سُهَادًا فِي تَرَقُّبِكُمْلَعَلَّ طَيْفَكُمُ فِي اللَّيْلِ يَلْقَاهُ
تَمْضِي الْأُوَيْقَاتُ وَالْأَنْظَارُ رَاصِدَةٌأُفْقَ التَّوَقُّعِ، لَكِنْ فِي الدُّجَى تَاهُوا
هَلْ مِنْ نَصِيبٍ لِمُشْتَاقٍ وَمَا بَقِيَتْمِنْهُ سِوَى رَفْرَفَاتٍ فِي حَنَايَاهُ
قَدْ شَفَّهُ الْوَجْدُ لَمْ يَتْرُكْ لَهُ نَفَسًافَاسْتَنْقِذِي قَبْلَ أَنْ تُرْمَى بَقَايَاهُ!

What of Longing?

  1. How fares your longing? Have its burning pangs flared high,
    and have its whispers beckoned from the heart's folds, deep inside?
  2. And have you bathed in the perfume of passion1? The very air
    grew steeped in it the moment that its scent spread far and wide.
  3. And have its promptings called on you to set out
    towards the beloved, whose eyes would be your ransom2?
  4. He spends the nights sleepless, watching out for you,
    in hope your phantom3 will come to meet him in the night.
  5. The little hours4 slip by, and every gaze keeps watch upon
    expectation’s far horizon; but in the dark they lost their way.
  6. Is there a share for one who longs, of whom there's nothing left
    but flutterings that tremble in the hollows of his side?
  7. Passion has worn him thin5, and left him not a breath:
    so rescue him, before what's left of him is cast aside!

Notes

  1. Al-jawā is the inward fever of love, a burning that consumes the lover. The word is close in sound to al-jaww, ‘the air’, in the second half of the verse, so that the scent of passion seems to fill the whole atmosphere. ↩
  2. Tafdīki ʿaynāhu, ‘his eyes ransom you’, adapts the Arabic formula of devotion ‘may I be your ransom’: the beloved is dearer to him than his own eyes. The shift to the third person (‘the beloved’, ‘he’) lets the poet speak of himself as though of someone else. ↩
  3. Ṭayf is the phantom of the beloved that visits the lover by night, in sleep or waking reverie, a central motif of classical Arabic love poetry. The Arabic here addresses her with the plural ‘you’ (kum), the plural of respect and tenderness. ↩
  4. Al-uwayqāt is a diminutive of ‘times, hours’. The diminutive makes the moments small and fleeting, and gives the line a note of wistful tenderness. ↩
  5. Shaffahu means that passion has made him so thin as to be almost transparent, a classical image of the lover wasted by love. ↩

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