Julia, O Wakefulness of the Dawn

O wakefulness of dawn — the light sped swiftly toward your evening,
bearing remnants of dawn's enchantment, remnants of your radiance;
on its laughing lips a shadow of your youth,
on its luminous touch a gleam of your guidance,
in which the generations read some of what your hands set down.

"Julia," O wakefulness of the dawn that stretched on and became morning,
if I now stand in the light, I still see the hoarse night,
and I see, as my companions do, the forerunner's steps at morning —
pioneers of light in the darkness: hail, a thousand hails!
You have cleft open for us the earth and the expanses of your sky.

You departed, foremost in merit, from this dreary world,
after the free pen had rent wondrous veils
and summoned beloved souls to the lofty sphere.
Those souls do not forget your grueling nights;
they bore your bier toward the light and streamed along behind you.

In my hearing are echoes of singular thoughts
that "Julia" scattered — from every collection a poem —
the pages of the ideal "Woman" that took the surname "the New."
I swear, O Julia, you were happy in this world
when you saw the green palm rise from the seed you planted.

Yesterday, when learning held festival with the largess of its bounty,
"the literature of classical Arabic" vied with the rarest pearls of its necklaces
and, by Time's leave, sang, chanting the crowning verse of its ode;
it made the past new again and donned its most splendid robes.
It said: "My pride is in my daughters," and bowed where it beholds you.

"Among the Arabs I have daughters who have carried off my secret;
their lights broke like morning in the garden of longing,
and behold, from among them are flowers, and birds that sing.
Pioneers of the first renaissance — they have my thanks.
'Julia,' sleep sweetly: the literature of classical Arabic has wept for you."

The light advanced upon the world, and dawn became noon,
and we turned away to affairs in which the sweet had turned bitter;
and the air of noon is something other than what it was at dawn:
having been a gentle breeze, it became live coals.
Thus have we stumbled along the line your steps traced.

Beginning is hard, but its resolve is a strong resolve;
it has a strange beauty, and a generous overflow.
That hardship is plain to see; ours is the hidden hardship —
we are entangled in impulses and a twisting struggle.
How sweet the dawn was when you stood at the zenith of your sky!

You did not chafe at torment, confinement, and seclusion,
after that matchless activity in the world of "the journalist."
Do you count grieving a weakness? It better befits the feeble.
In the spirit there remain remnants of struggle and of vigor,
and at your window a light shone forth from the flood of your splendor.

To you, "Salwa," my condolence; be comforted — you won her favor.
In you, and in those of your age, O "Salwa," she realized her hopes,
and an ardor that glowed beneath the folds of her mantle;
so she borrowed your radiant morning as a light for her evening.
Her eyes laughed when the dew of dawn watered you.

Amman — Jamal Salim Nowayhed