Tu Dani Tu Ze Chi Jawhar
“You Know, You of What Substance”
A Hafiz ghazal turned into song — the poet addressing God directly, asking what divine substance the wounded heart was made of, that even in death it clothes itself in tulips.
About This Recording
Tu Dani Tu Ze Chi Jawhar addresses God directly — a move that places the poem in the tradition of Persian devotional verse where the divine is not remote but answerable. The opening question — you know, from what substance you created our wounded hearts — is at once accusation and confession: the heart is wounded, and the wound is somehow the divine's design.
Ahmad Zahir's setting of this Hafiz ghazal treats the theological frame with the same emotional register he brought to purely romantic material. The arrangement does not signal 'sacred' — it is as warm and direct as his love songs. The implication is that for Zahir, the gap between devotional and romantic love was not a gap at all.
Lyrics
English Translation
You know, you — from what substance did you create our wounded hearts That a thousand tulips will cover our graves after this
What can I do but say: look with kindness, look At our burning hearts, our ashamed faces
I am that broken instrument that you do not play What lamentation shall I make for the hand that cut our strings
متن اصلی
تو دانی تو، زچه جوهر آفريدی، دل داغدار ما را که هزاران لاله پوشد، پس ازين مزار ما را
چه کنم جز اين که گويم، بنگر به لطف بنگر دل گرمسوز ما را، رخ شرمسار ما را
منم آن شکسته سازی، که تو ام نمی نوازی چه فغانم کنم زدستی، که گسسته تار ما را
Poetic Source & Adaptation
Hafiz Shirazi