Sar Sare Poshta

Sar Sare Poshta — On the Hilltop — opens with one of the more cinematically violent images in the Dari folk tradition: the lover slain on the hilltop, and Layla writing a letter in his blood. Layla is the beloved of Majnun in the classical story, but here she is the active agent — taking the blood that the lover's death has produced and using it as ink. The letter written in blood is the final communication of a love that ended in death.

The song then turns from folk violence to classical lyric imagery: 'Come into my sky, O my sun' — the beloved as sun entering the speaker's personal sky. The Pleiades (Parvin) and Venus (Zohra) are invoked as the beloved's attributes: Parvin for beauty and remoteness, Zohra for musical and artistic power. Both were associated with the arts in Persian astronomical tradition — the Pleiades with the beauty of stars in a cluster, Venus with music, poetry, and sensual pleasure.

'May your lips be my cup of wine / Your glance has the quality of love / From the cup of your eyes it pours' — the closing images return to the wine-and-cup tradition: lips as cup, eyes as vessel pouring love. The poem makes the beloved's face entirely legible in terms of the wine ceremony. Each feature dispenses something: the lips give wine, the eyes pour love. To look at the beloved is to be served.