Man Dar Ein Wayrana

The wayrana — the ruin, the wasteland, the abandoned place — is one of Persian Sufi poetry's most loaded settings. The kharabat (literally the ruin, but meaning the tavern-ruin where mystics gather) is the space where institutional religion's facade falls away and something more genuine can occur. Rumi, Hafiz, and Bedil all inhabit ruins; Zahir, singing this, places himself in the same tradition.

The final line requires attention: 'Were it not impiety I would say I have lost God.' The loss of the beloved is being equated with the loss of the divine — the Sufi move of making the human beloved a figure for divine love, and the loss of love a figure for spiritual desolation. Zahir delivers this threshold statement with care, the speaker stopping himself at the edge of what can be said.