Oh Bano Bano Jana

Oh Bano Bano Jana — O My Lady — is a courtly love song in which each couplet bestows a different distinction on the beloved. 'Bano' (lady) is a respectful form of address, locating the beloved in an elevated social register. 'City-lady' (shahri bano) specifies her as urban and sophisticated, the Kabul of the 1960s and 70s that celebrated exactly this kind of educated, city-dwelling femininity.

The physical compliments are organized by sense: the tresses bind the heart (touch), the eyes and brows steal it (sight), the lips have drunk 'the honey of ghazal' (taste fused with poetry). The last of these is the most inventive: to drink honey means to have absorbed sweetness; to drink the honey of ghazal means the lips have been shaped by poetry itself, which makes every word that comes from them already a song.

'Your glances wear the robe of night, O noble lady / In the goblet burns the brand of your lips' — the imagery escalates from courtly to mystical. The robe of night is darkness put on as a garment; the brand in the goblet is a mark burned by the lips into the vessel. Both images describe the beloved's features leaving permanent impressions on the world around them. 'The wine of your kiss has been savored' closes with something both intimate and liturgical — savored (chashida), which is the careful tasting of something whose value you already know.