Vol. 5

Fill the cup — the fire-water of the ghazal tradition, cups emptying one after another like a sea of fire. Zahir at his most directly Hafiz-ian: intoxication as the only route through thought into the city of memories.

Weep for me tonight — for tonight alone I am with you. A farewell poem that invokes Layla and Majnun only to deflect it: the speaker does not want love sealed on his grave or his beloved left without another.

Sometimes in the embrace of this one, sometimes that one — my heart has gone from my grasp; you with another — may I go blind; you boast of faithfulness; last night dancing with the rival you diminished my soul.

Who Am I, a Traveler — the self-questioning of the perpetual wanderer, identity located in movement rather than place. Love as the condition that makes all fixed home impossible.

O my spring — how long will you flee from the new spring, scatter the book of our memories? Your silent gaze has a hundred tongues; how long will you treat the wild breeze and gentle dew alike?

Do not distress my heart — for this wild bird, once it rises from a roof, settles again with great difficulty. A poem that collects the great archetypes of impossible love: Yusuf and Zulaikha, Layla and Majnun.

The moon too arrived from the road but left before arriving — a poem of departure so complete that the arrival itself is retrospectively erased.

Tonight in memory of your face I will make an uproar — grief performed as event, as noise, as flood. The speaker announces his planned suffering to the world, then confirms he is mad by nature and carries on with goblet and flask.

O you unaware of my pain — my dust has risen to the sky; you did not know my love, engaged with others, scattered me; I endured alone with the sea of my eyes — completely.

Oh Rain, Rain — a folk invocation of rain, the beloved figured as the rain that restores the parched earth. One of his most direct connections to the Afghan natural world.