Raw Sar Bene Ba Balin

Raw Sar Bene Ba Balin — Go, Lay Your Head Upon the Pillow — is one of the more bitter poems in Zahir's catalog: the dismissal of the beloved with a resignation that has curdled past grief into detachment. 'Leave me, this ruined, night-wandering, afflicted one' — the speaker characterizes themselves in three terms, each darker than the last. The invitation to leave is not reconciled acceptance but exhausted release.

'Here I am with the waves of longing, alone from night till dawn / Whether you come and forgive, or go and be cruel' — the conditional is the poem's moral center. The speaker has reached a point where the beloved's choice — to come and forgive or to go and be cruel — no longer produces different outcomes for the speaker's condition. Both possibilities are registered with the same tone: 'whether.' The longing exists independent of what the beloved decides.

'On the king of the beautiful, faithfulness is not required / O yellow-faced lover — you be patient, be faithful' — the final address shifts from the beloved to the lover (the speaker addressing themselves). The beloved who is 'king of the beautiful' operates under no obligation of faithfulness; it is the lover who must be patient and faithful. The yellow-faced lover (rokh-e zard eshegha) is the classic image of the lovelorn — pallor from grief — here addressed with a gentleness that was not available for the beloved. The advice is for the speaker themselves: be patient, it is what is required of people like us.