La palma (The Palm Tree)

 Abderramán I (Abd al-Rahman I) (731-788)

Español

Tú también eres ¡oh palma!

en este suelo extranjera.

Llora, pues; mas siendo muda,

¿cómo has de llorar mis penas?

Tú no sientes, cual yo siento,

el martirio de la ausencia.

Si tú pudieras sentir,

amargo llanto vertieras.

A tus hermanas de Oriente

mandarías tristes quejas,

a las palmas que el Éufrates

con sus claras ondas riega.

Pero tú olvidas la patria,

a par que me la recuerdas;

la patria de donde Abbas

y el hado adverso me alejan.

English

A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa

Born in the West, far from the land of palms

I said to it, “How like me you are, far away and in exile!

In long separation from family and friends

You have sprung from soil in which you are a stranger

And I, like you, am far away from home”

In the midst of my garden

Grows a palm-tree;

Born in the West,

Away from the country of palm-trees.

 

I cried: You are like me,

For you resemble me

In wandering and peregrination,

And the long separation from kith and kin.

 

You also

Grew up on a foreign soil;

Like me,

You are far from the country of your birth.

 

May the fertilizing clouds of morning

Water you in exile,

May the beneficent rains besought by the poor

Never forsake you.