افسوس که عشقه
Afsoos Ke Ishqe
“Alas That Love”
Lyrics
Lyrics updated · July 2026English Translation
Alas, that your pure love took on the color of mere desire Fire took hold of this too-quickly-ripened fruit
You know, your love was the hope of my life You left, and love took back everything it had given me
How long must I cry to God — this heart, from union with you Has grown hopeless and has grasped the hem of the justice-giver
Transliteration
Afsoos ke ishqe pake tu range hawas greft Aatash bajan ein samar zood ras greft
Dani omide zendageyam bod ishqe tu Rafti o ishq aanche ba man dad, pas greft
Ta kay khuda khuda konam, ein dil ze wasle tu Shod naa omid o damane aan daad ras greft
متن اصلی
افسوس که عشق پاک تو رنگ هوس گرفت آتش بجان اين ثمر زود رس گرفت
دانی اميد زندگيم بود عشق تو رفتی و عشق آنچه به من داد، پس گرفت
تا کی خدا خدا کنم، اين دل ز وصل تو شد نا اميد و دامن آن داد رس گرفت
Alas, that pure love took on the color of mere desire — the grief of a love that began as something transcendent and became something ordinary. Fire took hold of the too-quickly-ripened fruit.
About This Recording
Afsoos Ke Ishqe — Alas, That Your Love — is a poem about a love that failed not through cruelty or unfaithfulness in the usual sense, but through a more particular corruption: pure love becoming ordinary desire. The Persian poetic tradition maintained a distinction between eshq (love as a state of being, potentially Sufi, potentially divine) and shahwat or hawa (desire, physical or contingent). When eshq becomes hawa, something has been lost at the root.
'Fire took hold of this too-quickly-ripened fruit' — premature ripening as a figure for love that developed too fast, skipping stages. Fruit that ripens before its time is vulnerable; it looks ready but the structure isn't there.
The legal image at the end — 'I have grasped the hem of the justice-giver' — places the speaker before a higher court, appealing against love itself as an injustice. The hem-grasping gesture (daman-giri) is a traditional appeal for mercy or justice; to grasp the hem of the justice-giver (dadras) is to bring a formal complaint to the highest available authority.
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