Shabe Zolmaneyam Imshab

'My dark night tonight is blacker than last night' — the comparative darkness implies a series: last night was dark, tonight is darker, the trajectory is downward. The progression is not dramatic but incremental, which makes it more threatening. Each night is the worst so far.

'Come, cupbearer, give me wine — give me wine without limit / Despite the cleric's frown, give me the sweet water' — the cleric's frown (akhund's disapproval) enters not to be argued with but simply to be overridden. 'Despite' acknowledges the prohibition; the request for wine proceeds anyway. 'Sweet water' (aab-e-shirin) is a common circumlocution for wine in poems where the speaker is technically observing propriety.

'For my soul has reached my lips tonight' — jan ba lab rasidan (soul reaching the lips) is the Persian idiom for being at the point of death: the soul, which resides in the body, has risen to the very threshold of exit. To drink in this state is not pleasure-seeking but a last act. The poem is about a night so dark that drinking is what you do when you are about to cease.