The Jasmine Necklace
The Jasmine Necklace on pink paper in Nizar Qabbani’s neat hand. Courtesy of Yasmine Seale | قصيدة “طوق الياسمين” على ورق زهري بخط يد نزار قباني. مع الشكر للمترجمة
“Thank you for the jasmine necklace,”
you laughed, and I thought you knew
what it meant, this man’s gift of a garland
of jasmine. I thought you had understood.
.
You sat in a corner, brushing your hair,
drawing drops from a bottle of scent,
on your lips a tune, heartsick, French,
its complaint, like mine, pathetic.
.
Your feet, in brocade slippers:
two narrow streams of longing.
.
Then you went to the wardrobe
and took off your clothes,
and you put on new ones,
and asked me to choose.
.
Is it for me, then? For me alone,
this burnishing of your beauty?
.
So I rose to my feet
in a tangle of colours,
my forehead on fire.
.
The black one,
off the shoulder.
Are you hesitant?
But it’s the colour
of grief (my heart’s
own gloomy hue).
.
And yet you wore it,
and wore the jasmine
necklace, and I thought
you had seen its meaning,
this man’s gift of a garland
of jasmine. I thought you
had known what I meant.
.
This evening, in a small bar
I saw you dancing, saw you break
upon the arms of your admirers,
refracted in them, your lips
to the steady ear of another
were humming a French tune,
its sorrow as heavy as mine.
.
The certainty came over me
that it was for another, this
burnishing of your beauty,
for him the drops of scent,
for him that you change
in and out of your clothes,
when at your feet I saw
the jasmine necklace,
its mute white corpse
mangled by dancers,
a man’s arm swooping
to save it, cut short
by you, crowing:
“It’s nothing, only
a jasmine necklace.”
