Tura Sad Bar Goftam

Tura Sad Bar Goftam — I Told You a Hundred Times — is organized around the question 'Is this not enough?' (aya bassa nist?), which repeats at the end of each stanza as both complaint and plea. The speaker has declared themselves a servant (banda, also meaning slave or worshiper) a hundred times; has offered their life in exchange for one greeting; has stamped their life and death in the beloved's name. Each action is offered as evidence of devotion and met with the question: is this not enough for you to respond?

'I wrote, spread about, stamped — with a wordless hand / My life, my death — in your name' is the poem's most arresting image. 'A wordless hand' (dast-e bi-zaban, literally a tongueless hand) is the hand that acts without speaking, that writes without using language — a hand that can only show, not say. Writing one's life and death in the beloved's name with such a hand means the inscription is made with action rather than declaration, and yet somehow it has still not been sufficient.

The final stanza — 'Though the beginning of lovers is of every color / With your name I began / Is this not enough?' — introduces the observation that lovers begin variously (with every color, meaning with every kind of sign and origin) but this speaker began specifically with the beloved's name. To begin with someone's name is to make them the origin point of one's love. The refrain 'Is this not enough?' after this claim carries its full weight: I made you the beginning of everything — what more evidence of devotion could you require? The song ends in the question, unanswered.