In the quiet twilight of longing and memory, I find myself returning again and again to this ghazal by Iraqi—a mystic whose verses are a mirror reflecting both the agony of separation and the rapture of love. The poem’s opening cry, “تا کی از دست فراق تو ستمها بینیم؟” (“How long, oh beloved, will we suffer the torments of parting?”) reverberates like a plaintive echo in the chambers of the heart, inviting us to contemplate the ceaseless dance between despair and hope.
Each couplet unfurls as a delicate tapestry of yearning and surrender. The poet dares to offer his heart—“دل دهیم، از سر زلف تو چو بویی یابیم”—suggesting that even a mere scent from the beloved’s tresses is worth the sacrifice of life itself. In these lines, the act of loving becomes a transformative alchemy: every drop of pain distilled into the fragrance of beauty, every fragment of a broken heart rebuilt by the mere glimpse of that radiant face.
Iraqi’s words sing of a paradox familiar to anyone who has loved deeply: in a world where others only see the surface, the true depth of passion lies hidden in every stolen glance and every secret sigh. When he asks, “روی خوب تو که هر دم دگران میبینند، چه شود گر بگذاری تو دمی ما بینیم؟” (“If your beauty is seen by others every moment, what becomes of us when you spare but a moment for our eyes?”), the poet lays bare his vulnerability. Here, love is both a feast and a famine—a blessing that nourishes yet also isolates, for how can the soul be whole when it is continuously reminded of its incompleteness?
The ghazal continues to traverse the realms of the seen and unseen. It speaks to the experience of wandering in a desert of separation, “ما که دور از تو ز هجرانت به جان آمدهایم”—we, who have become living embers in the cold night of your absence. Yet even amid the relentless storm of grief, there is a subtle insistence on finding beauty—a quiet command to reveal that face, that glimpse of eternity, if only for today. For in the soft unveiling of the beloved’s visage, all sorrows might melt like frost under the morning sun.
In the final couplet, the poet tenderly promises, “روی زیبای تو، ای دوست، به کام دل خویش تا عراقی بنمیرد نه همانا بینیم”—a vow that his devotion shall not die as long as he beholds that face, as long as the divine spark of love continues to kindle within. It is an ode to perseverance and to the eternal hunger of the heart—a hunger that sees no end in the face of divine beauty.
This ghazal is not simply a lament; it is a celebration of the mystical journey through the landscapes of love. It reminds us that pain and pleasure, separation and union, are but two sides of the same luminous coin. In Iraqi’s words, we glimpse the bittersweet truth: love, in its most transcendent form, is the very essence of existence—a flame that, even when flickering in the dark, has the power to ignite the heavens.
May we all, in our wanderings through the corridors of time and heart, discover that the beauty of the beloved is the compass guiding us home.
