على حجري

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
عَلَى حِجْرِي تُؤَانِسُنِي فَأَنْسَىبِأَنَّ الْأَرْضَ أَسْفَلَنَا تَدُورُ
تُقَبِّلُنِي فَمًا جِيدًا وَصَدْرًافَتَنْبُتُ مِنْ مَسَامَاتِي زُهُورُ
فَيَا لَكِ مِنْ أَنِيسَةِ رُوحِ حُرٍّتَوَهَّجَ فِيهِ مُذْ عَشِقَ الشُّعُورُ
تَعَشَّقَ فِيكِ نَبْعًا أَسْعَفَتْهُبِدَفْقَاتِ الْحَنَانِ نَدًى وَنُورُ
تَوَلَّهَ فِي عُيُونِكِ فَاسْتَقَاهَامُرَنِّقَةً تَجُودُ بِهَا الثُّغُورُ
وَأَبْدَعَ بَيْنَ كَفَّيْ مُسْتَهَامٍحَنِينَكِ حِينَ أَيْنَعَتِ الْخُصُورُ
فَأَعْصِرُهُ حُمَيَّا فِي دِنَانٍمِنَ الْوَجْدِ الْمُعَتَّقِ إِذْ يَفُورُ
وَطَابَ السُّكْرُ فَانْتَشَتِ الدَّوَالِيتَدَلَّتْ مِنْ تَسَاقِينَا الْبُدُورُ
كَأَنَّ الْجَوَّ حِينَ تَضُمُّ حِضْنِيبَسَاتِينٌ تُرَنِّمُهَا الطُّيُورُ
وَبَاسِمَةُ الزُّهُورِ عَلَى رُبَاهَاتَفُوحُ بِهَا مُضَمَّخَةً عُطُورُ

On My Lap

  1. Upon my lap she keeps me company, and I forget
    that the earth goes turning round below.
  2. She kisses me, on mouth and neck and breast,
    and from my pores the flowers grow.
  3. What a companion you are1 to a free man's soul,
    in which, since first it loved, feeling has been aglow!
  4. In you it came to love a spring, revived
    by tenderness that gushed as dew and light.
  5. It lost itself in your eyes, and drank from them
    a languid2 draught that lips most freely bestow.
  6. And in the palms of one who is crazed with love it fashioned
    your yearning, when the waists had ripened.
  7. So I press it into heady wine3, in casks
    of long-aged passion, as it seethes and overflows.
  8. The intoxication was sweet; the vines grew tipsy,
    and from our pouring for each other, full moons hung low4.
  9. When you hold me to your breast, it is as if the air
    were orchards where the birds break into song,
  10. with smiling flowers on their hills, from which,
    steeped in fragrance, perfumes drift along.

Notes

  1. The poem turns from speaking of her (‘she keeps me company’, ‘she kisses me’) to speaking to her. This sudden change of person (iltifāt) is a valued device of Arabic rhetoric: it brings the beloved from description into presence. ↩
  2. Murannaqa is used of eyes heavy with sleep, drowsy and half-closed, a classical mark of beauty. The same word is also used of water that has been stirred and clouded, so the eyes are at once languid and a drink. Grammatically it may describe either the eyes or the draught drawn from them; the English keeps both close together. ↩
  3. Ḥumayyā is the strength and fire of wine, the first heady rush it sends to the head. The wine, the casks (dinān) and the aged vintage (muʿattaq) belong to the classical Arabic wine-song, here turned into a figure for love’s intoxication. ↩
  4. Tasāqī is pouring drink for one another in turn, the custom of companions at a wine gathering; here it is the lovers who pour for each other. The ‘full moons’ (budūr) that hang down like clusters from the vines stand for radiant faces, the full moon being the standard Arabic image of beauty. ↩

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