ای عشق
Ay Ishq
“O Love”
Lyrics
Lyrics updated · July 2026English Translation
O love! By your hand my heart is burned, burned O beloved! By your path my eyes are fixed, fixed
You entered through the eye and made a home in the heart From its nature you made it a ruin, a ruin I will not say what you did or did not do — Only this one word: you made me mad, mad
O my darling, my pain Even if you cut off my head I will not turn from you Even if you cut off my head with a sharp knife Circling in blood, I will circle around you
Transliteration
Ay ishq! ze dast tu qalbe man sokhta, sokhta Ay yar! ba rahe tu chashme man dokhta, dokhta
Ze rahe dida dar dil khana kardi Ze pasti khana ra wayrana kardi Nagoyam ze aanche kardi ya nakardi Faqat yak gap: mara dewana kardi
Negare nazaninam, ah dardam Saram ra gar bori az tu nagardam Saram ra gar bori ba khanjare tez Bakhoon jawlan zada dawret begardam
متن اصلی
ای عشق! ز دست تو قلب من سوخته، سوخته ای يار! به راه تو چشم من دوخته ، دوخته
ز راه ديده در دل خانه کردی ز پستی خانه را ويرانه کردی نگويم ز آنچه کردی يا نکردی فقط يک گپ: مرا ديوانه کردی
نگار نازنينم، آه دردم سرم را گر بُری از تو نگردم سرم را گر بری با خنجر تیز بخون جولان زده دورت بگردم
O Love! — the direct address to Love itself as an entity, responsible for the burning heart, the fixed eyes, the ruined nature. Love entered through the eye, made a home in the heart, turned it to a ruin. The speaker decapitated but still circling.
About This Recording
Addressing Love (ishq) itself — not the beloved, not God, but the abstract force of love — is a rhetorical move that appears across Persian and Sufi poetry. Love is personified as an agent with its own agenda: it enters, takes up residence, and destroys whatever it inhabits. The speaker is not Love's object but its location.
'You entered through the eye and made a home in the heart / From its nature you made it a ruin' — the sequence is precise. Love's entry point is the eye (the organ that sees the beloved), its destination is the heart, and its effect is to reduce the heart from its nature (whatever it was before) to a kharab, a ruin.
'Even if you cut off my head I will not turn from you / Circling in blood, I will circle around you' — the image of the severed head continuing to circle is not uncommon in Persian lyric (it appears in Rumi and others) but it earns its place here. The threat of death as the limit of devotion that the speaker is willing to exceed: past death, the devotion continues.
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