The following translations are from May’s first book, Fleurs de Réve, a collection of poems she wrote in French during her adolescence and early twenties. She published it in 1911 under the pen name Isis Copia. –Rose DeMaris.
Five Poems by May Ziadeh
Translated by Rose DeMaris
In Forest
Sweet dews
in these tender stems
flood my eyes.
This breeze holds her breath—
then ripples
through heaven’s hidden depths;
a curved branch,
stirred by her sigh,
plaits grass at my feet;
a leaf trembles;
a bird sings, waits, sings
in rhythm with her wishes.
Something slides,
drops
into the thick green braid.
Once, I sang for love.
Now my voice grows weak,
having hurt too much.
The far-off edge of the sea,
tentative, smiles
through her vapors of brine,
but my soul,
unwoven,
is trapped in a chasm.
Only cries
can escape this heart.
En Foret
La douce rosée
En mole fusée
Inonde mes yeux;
La brise module
Et sa plainte nodule
Dans le fond des cieux.
Son frisson caresse
La branche qui tresse
A mes pieds ses noeuds;
La feuille frissone
Et l’oiseau chantonne
En rhythmant ses voeux.
Qulque chose glisse
Sous l’herbe que plisse
Un grand gallon vert.
Des voix amoureuses
Pleurent, langoureuses,
D’avoir trop souffert…
La plage lointaine
Sourit, incertaine,
Parmi ses vapeurs;
Comme dans un gouffre,
Et pleure des coeurs!
Twilight
Dreaming, I leave footprints
in the places
where you passed,
hide my heart under
blown branches,
tangled in love.
This bough looks like
my old friend’s smile,
charming and tender
in a photograph.
Evening, thick with echoes,
tugs my soul toward
blue, to the realm of
those I’ve lost.
Now is the hour of dusk
when Rousseau shivered,
when Poe pondered the dead,
and Baudelaire
communed.
Under the sea’s blanket
a ripe fruit slowly falls
asleep, even prettier now
than in the morning.
And night’s peeled apple
rises over a mountain:
sweet, shining moon!
My young heart falters
under the weight of this
beauty, too much, too
much—the mystery of
the darkening
world.
Suddenly these tears,
tears misunderstood,
tears of a child
without brother or sister,
slip from my shut eyes.
Crepuscle
Très lentement mon pas rêveur
Marque le sol de vos allées;
Et je marche, étreignant mon coeur,
Sous vos branches échevelées;
S’enlacant amoureusement,
Dans les festoons de leur feuillage
A moi sourit comme une image
D’ami lointain tendre et charmant.
…Et c’est le sir…et le silence
Avec ses échos assoupis
Coule dans mon âme en partance
Vers un ciel de rêves amis.
Ah! c’est l’heure crépusculaire
Oui faisat frissonner Rousseau,
Où songeait aux morts Edgar Poe,
L’heure où méditait Baudelaire…
Sous le linceul du flot lointain
Disparait l’ardente prunella
Du soleil, si gaie au matin,
Mais à cette heure bien plus belle!
Et la prunella de la nuit
Se lève haut sur la montagne,
Eclairant la vaste campagne;
C’est la douce lune qui luit!
Et mon coeur si jeune se serre
Sous la splendeur de ce beau soir…
L’ombre lui pèse et le mystère
Du monde lui semble trop noir…
Et des larmes, sans juste cause,
Larmes d’une incomprise peur,
Larmes d’enfant sans frère ou soeur,
Glissent sur ma paupière close…
To Mokattam at Dawn*
You bathe your rocky ornaments in mists,
let roselight bleed into your cracks.
The Star slowly mounts: his light drenches you.
The Star-King of two worlds, Earth and firmament,
sifts gold dust over your skin
as a hand strokes a sleeping lover’s hair.
Above your blunt peak, a pink satin sky
cups the rising slice of fire.
Oh, if I could be a lark and kiss your crest
with my wing—
if I could ride a horse to your distant slope,
careless, wild, and bold—
if I could wander your caves, sleep in you—
if I could climb,
forgetting my pain.
* a mountain in Cairo
Au Moukattam
Baigne ton feston géant
Au sein des eaux vaporeuses,
Un sillon là-bas flottant
Saigne des lueurs songeuses ;
L’Astre monte lentement
Et de sa clarté t’inonde,
L’Astre-Roi du double Monde
Se promène au firmament.
Une poussière dorée
Folâtre sur tes flancs nus,
Comme une main adorée
Frôlant des cheveux connus. . .
Et sur ta cime aplatie
Un ciel rosé, eblouissant,
De son satin ravissant
Suspend la chaude partie.
Ah, si pareil aux oiseaux,
Je pouvais raser ta crête
De mon aile . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
Si je pouvais, à cheval,
Là sur ta côte lointaine
Capricieuse et hautaine
Errer, oubliant mon mal.
Song to the Moon
What do you dream in your azure palace,
ivory insomniac moon?
What do you dream, contemplative moon,
as I bathe in your nacreous gaze?
Tell me the tireless story that gleams
from your luminous late-at-night face.
Tell of the reverie that radiates, white,
and restarts every night, and never concludes.
Shine for me, pearl satellite.
Shine for me in my long sleepless ache.
Your crystalline beams and breezes unlock
these slow drops and sad melodies of mine.
A La Lune
Au fond de ton palais fait d’azur et d’éther
O Lune languissant en ta pâle insomnie,
A quoi donc, rêves-tu, contemplatrice amie
Dont le large regard tombe mystique et clair ?
Quel est-il, dis-le moi, cet inlassable rêve
Qui sur ton front brillant jette un reflet blafard,
Ce rêve qui te fait songer la nuit bien tard,
Qui toujours recommence et ne jamais s’achéve ?
Brille sans te lasser, bel Astre de la nuit,
Brille pour consoler me longues insomnies !
J’aime tex clairs rayons et la brise qui fuit
Et les pleurs langoureux de tristes harmonies. . .
Goodbye, Lebanon
Goodbye, Lebanese mountains.
I’m going far
from your pink rose garlands,
your bright red satin strawberries.
Egypt called in a serious voice,
and already my boat’s rocking
bears new fruit—
But sea, whisper your lullabies
please, because I hurt so much.
Soft waves of home, sob for me.
Don’t vanish so soon, my love.
Leaving you, my chest is all wound,
wholly tender.
Lebanon,
you made me. Your moody nights
put the darkness in my eyes
and laid a vein of lightning in my soul.
Your white lace waterfalls wove
jasmine vines and oud serenades
all through me,
and my speech is the Spirit
murmuring in your woods.
All my undulance is yours:
sometimes my soul is wild,
an egret flying far
beyond the ocean’s edge,
and sometimes I curl up,
tender as an anemone when touched,
as salty and as damp.
Now your outline fades. Your land
is like a reverie that ends
but grief
goes on. Goodbye, my nest.
I adore you, Lebanon.
My heart—
pink roses,
red strawberries
—turns to vapor with the word:
Goodbye.
Adieu
Adieu, montagnes libanaises!
Je vais bien loin
De vos festoons mauves et fraises
De clair satin.
L’Egypte où j’habite m’appelle,
Timbre profonde;
Et déjà vogue ma nacelle,
Rhythme fécund!
O mer, murmure tes berceuses
Car j’ai bien mal!
Plaignez-vous, vagues lanoureuses
Du sol natal!
Ah! ne t’éloignes pas si vite,
Liban chéri!
Ce soir d’adieu mon coeur s’agite
Tout attendri…
Tes nuits ont mis dans ma prunella
La sombre nuit
Et dans mon âme une parcelle
D’éclair qui luit;
Les dentelles de tes cascades
Ont fait mon coeur
Tissé de fleurs, de sérénades,
D’amour berceur;
Aux caprices de ta nature
J’ai pris le miens,
De tes bois oò l’Esprit murmure:
Mes entretiens;
Et mon âme est parfois sauvage
Comme un oiseau
Qui rêve lors de son passage
Au bord de l’eau.
Et parfois je me sens si douce,
Douce à pleurer,
Rien qu’ à toucher la tendre mousse,
Ou l’effleurer…
Ce soir je te cois, c’est un rêve
Et qui finit !
Tu disparais, au chagrin trêve !
Adieu, mon nid ! !
Je t’aime, ô Liban, je t’adore !
Liban, adieu !
Dans ce mot mon coeur s’évapore…
Adieu ! Adieu !
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May Ziadeh (1886-1941) was one of the great thinkers, writers, and literary organizers of the Nahda movement. Born in Nazareth, Palestine to a Lebanese father and Palestinian mother, May Ziadeh—Marie, Mary, Isis Copia—lived many lives across many languages. She studied in Lebanon, matured intellectually in Cairo, and wrote in French before choosing Arabic as her literary home, aligning herself with the intellectual ambitions of the Nahda. She balanced a prolific career in education and publishing with a lifelong devotion to reading, and in 1922, she became the first woman to lecture at the American University of Beirut. Her intellectual appetite led her to learn German, Italian, Spanish, and English, providing the foundation for a literary output that spanned multiple genres. In the late 1930s, she was institutionalized and kept against her will; it took a campaign to get her released from confinement and her cousin’s forced guardianship. Her published works include Fleurs de rêve, The Bedouin Scholar, Musings of a Young Woman, Equality, Rays of Darkness, Rays of Light: Collected Articles, Between Ebb and Flow, and Aisha Taymour, an Avant-guard Poet. She gave her last public lecture on January 20, 1941 at the American University of Cairo. It was titled “Live Dangerously.”
Rose DeMaris is a Lebanese American poet and translator based in Montana. She studied poetry and literary translation at Columbia University, where she earned an MFA. Her translations of May Ziadeh’s poems appear in Asymptote, Los Angeles Review, Diode, Fence, and the anthology Virginia’s Sisters, and they were spotlit by the Academy of American Poets during Arab American Heritage Month in 2025. She is working on a complete translation of Ziadeh’s first book of poetry, Fleurs de Réve. Rose’s original poems appear in New England Review, Narrative, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.