Translations - When She Appeared, Swaying by Lisan ad-Din ibn al-Khatib

When she appeared, swaying, she softened Youth and Coquetry.
My love, her beauty enticed us (together); I (would) sacrifice myself for her; is there (a possibility of) a connection?

She adumbrated with her gander; captured us in gardens between the shadows.
A twig was charmed, when she sang her fantasy, and bent (in infatuation).

My menace, O my fuddle, I have no one to compassionate my grievance,
with love, of agony, other than the owner of Beauty.

Bilingual Contemplations

I am, as you could have guessed from my name, not of an English-speaking nationality. I grew, however, to speak in two tongues – Arabic and English (almost polar differences) – with near-equal fluency, such that I was once described as having two mother tongues.

Right from age 2, I went to a British nursery, up until graduating from Year 13 from a British-curriculum school. Of course, at home, the medium of communication was not English, but it was English movies that I watched and English music that I listened to and English novels that I read.

This culminated, in my mid-teens, to a very serious campaign to better my English and the art of using it, be it speech or writing, such that I might be able to articulate as clearly as possible any idea. It seemed nearly a superpower to be able to transfer information with every attachable emotion and expression to almost everyone in the world.