امشب شدهام مست
Imshab Shoda Am Mast
“Tonight I Have Become Drunk”
Lyrics
Lyrics updated · July 2026English Translation
Tonight I have become drunk so that I may weep drunkenly Let me spend one night weeping in the corner of the tavern
The story of the heart is a tale full of pain and grief Let me weep over this tale and story
I have come drunk to this tavern so that tonight I may weep over the laughter of this goblet and cup
Transliteration
Imshab shoda am mast ke mastana begeryam Begzar shabe goshaye maykhana begeryam
Afsanaye dil qesaye por ranj o malalest Begzar bar ein qesa o afsana begeryam
Za-aan amada-am mast dar ein maykada ke imshab Bar qahqahye ein saghar o paymana begeryam
متن اصلی
امشب شده ام مست که مستانه بگريم بگذار شبی گوشه ی ميخانه بگريم
افسانه ی دل قصه ی پر رنج و ملاليست بگذار بر اين قصه و افسانه بگريم
زان آمده ام مست در اين ميکده که امشب بر قهقه ی اين ساغر و پيمانه بگريم
Tonight I have become drunk so that I may weep drunkenly — the tavern corner as the proper place for grief. Intoxication sought not for joy but as the condition that makes weeping fully possible.
About This Recording
The tavern corner (kunj-e-maikhana) is one of Persian poetry's most specific locations: a place of social marginalization that becomes, in the Sufi reading, the site of authentic spiritual experience. Zahir returns to it repeatedly in his wine songs, and Imshab Shoda Am Mast makes its purpose explicit — the speaker has come drunk to the tavern in order to weep.
The inversion is characteristic of the ghazal's logic: intoxication is not sought for happiness but as the condition that permits grief. Sobriety, with its defenses and self-controls, is inadequate to the magnitude of what the speaker needs to feel.
'I have come drunk to this tavern so that tonight / I may weep over the laughter of this goblet and cup' — weeping over the cup's laughter is a striking construction. The cup laughs because it was filled; the speaker weeps because the same filling-and-emptying is all that's available in the beloved's absence. The cup's joy and the speaker's grief share the same source.
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