شب چو در بستم
Shab Cho Dar Bastam
“When I Closed the Door at Night”
Lyrics
Lyrics updated · July 2026English Translation
When at night I closed the door and drunkenly feasted on pure wine If the moon knocked at the door with its ring, I gave it an answer
You saw that Tartar enemy — she is the enemy of my soul Although for a lifetime I mistakenly called her a friend
The dwelling became the eyes of strangers I wept so much I ruined it
When I told the candle the tale of the moth's burnt heart I set a fire in its heart and then cooled its flame
Transliteration
Shab cho dar bastam o mast az may nabash kardam Mah agar halqa badar koft jawabash kardam
Didi an tark khata doshman janast mara Gar ch omre ba khata dost hesabash kardam
Manzel mardome begana cho shod mardom chashem An qadar gerya namodam ke kharabash kardam
Sharah dagh dil parwana cho goftam ba shama Atashe dar dilash afganda o abash kardam
Gharq khoon bod o namimord ze hasrat farhad Khwandam afsanaye shirin o khwabash kardam
Dil ke khonabaye gham o jigar goshaye dehar Bar sar atash jor tu kababash kardam
Zendagi kardan man mordan tadriji bowad Anche jan kanad tanam omr hesabash kardam
متن اصلی
شب چو در بستم و مست از می نابش کردم ماه اگر حلقه بدر کوفت جوابش کردم
ديدی آن ترک ختا دشمن جانست مرا گر چه عمری به خطا دوست حسابش کردم
منزل مردم بيگانه چو شد مردم چشم آن قدر گريه نمودم که خرابش کردم
شرح داغ دل پروانه چو گفتم با شمع آتشی در دلش افگنده و آبش کردم
غرق خون بود و نمی مُرد زحسرت فرهاد خواندم افسانه شيرين و خوابش کردم
دل که خونابه ی غم بود و جگر گوشه ی دهر بر سر آتش جور تو کبابش کردم
زندگی کردن من مردن تدريجی بود آنچه جان کند تنم عمر حسابش کردم
When I closed the door at night and feasted drunkenly on pure wine — if the moon knocked, I answered; that Tartar enemy I called friend for a lifetime; I wept so much I ruined the dwelling; when I told the candle the moth's burnt-heart tale, I set it on fire then cooled it.
About This Recording
Shab Cho Dar Bastam — When at Night I Closed the Door — is a poem of private feasting and private grief. The closed door at night is the act of withdrawal from the social world; the drunkenly feasted on pure wine is not shameful excess but the legitimate privacy of someone who has chosen their company (wine and solitude) over whatever the outside offers. When the moon knocks, the speaker answers — but from inside a closed space.
'You saw that Tartar enemy — she is the enemy of my soul / Although for a lifetime I mistakenly called her a friend' — the Tartar (Tatar) enemy in Persian lyric is the figure of the beautiful and ruthless adversary, whose beauty made the speaker mistake them for something else. The enemy called friend for a lifetime is the most specific version of love's deception: not the beloved who was briefly mistaken but the one you spent years calling something they were not.
The candle and moth image at the end is the most structurally interesting: 'When I told the candle the tale of the moth's burnt heart / I set a fire in its heart and then cooled its flame.' The speaker is the one doing the damage — setting fire by telling the story, then cooling what was set ablaze. The candle is extinguished by sympathy and then denied even that sympathy. The speaker is both the source of illumination and its extinguisher, which is a precise account of how grief works: it generates enough heat to warm another's understanding, then withdraws even that.
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