قصيدة رائعة للشاعر محمود درويش بالانجليزية

**سفيرة الجنوب** · 01-08-2011, 02:52 PM

Poem Title : Jameel Bouthaina, and I
We grew older, Jameel Bouthaina and I, each

alone, in two separate eras . . .

It is time that does what sun

and wind do: it polishes us then kills us whenever

the mind bears the heart’s passion, or

whenever the heart reaches its wisdom

***

Jameel! does she grow old, like you, like me,

Bouthaina?

***

She grows old, my friend, outside the heart

in others’ eyes. But inside me

the gazelle bathes in the spring that pours out of her being

***

Is that her, or is that her image?

***

That’s her, my friend. Her flesh, her blood,

and her name. Timeless. She might stop me

tomorrow on her road to her yesterday

***

Did she love you, Jameel? Or did she like being a metaphor

in your songs, a pearl . . . whenever she stared

into your nights and welled up, she rose easterly as a moon

with a heart of stone?

***

It’s love, my friend, our chosen death

one passerby marrying the absolute in another . . .

No end for me, no beginning for me. No

Bouthaina for me or me for Bouthaina. This

is love, my friend. I wish I were

twenty doors younger than myself

***

for the air to be light on me, and for her side-profile

***

at night to be clearer than a mole

above her navel . . .

***

Did you seduce her, Jameel, contrary to what

the narrators have said about you, and did she seduce you?

***

I married her. We shook the heavens and they streamed

milk on our bread. Whenever I came to her my body

bloomed flower by flower, and my tomorrow spilled

its wine drop by drop into her jugs

***

Were you created for her, Jameel,

and will you remain for her?

***

I was ordered and tutored. I have no concern

for my spilled presence like water on her grape

skin. And no concern for the immortality

that will follow us like shepherd dogs.

I am only as Bouthaina created me

***

Would you explain love to me, Jameel,

to remember it one idea at a time?

***

People who know love best are the most perplexed,

you must burn, not to know yourself, but

to illuminate Bouthaina’s night . . .

***

Higher than the night, Jameel flew

and broke his crutches. And leaned into my ear

and whispered: If you see Bouthaina in another

woman, make of death, my friend,

a friend. And glitter over there, in Bouthaina’s

name, like the nûn in rhyme!