Ze Bahar Omr E Man

Ze Bahar Omr E Man — Of the Spring of My Life — is a poem of bitter accounting. 'Of the spring of my life there is nothing but faithfulness / Look at what is before me — there is nothing but cruelty' — the spring of life (bahar-e omr) is the period of youth, energy, and possibility. The speaker's contribution from this spring has been faithfulness (wafa). What lies before them — what was done in return — is cruelty (jafa). The asymmetry is stated flatly, without elaboration.

'O world that has wounded me — I carry your wounds as a gift' is one of Zahir's most unexpected formulations. The wounds inflicted by the world (and the beloved) are carried as a gift, as an endowment, as something the speaker now bears with them. This is not masochism but a kind of appropriation: what was done to the speaker becomes part of them, theirs to keep. The wounds are property now. 'Choke, my voice — songs of my instrument' — the voice is told to choke itself, to swallow its own song, an act of self-silencing in the face of ongoing cruelty.

'Do not look at my heart — look at yourself / For one moment leave the world — disturb your own heart / Do not do more cruelty and oppression to the broken-winged bird' — the closing address shifts from complaint to instruction. The speaker tells the beloved (or the world) to examine themselves, to leave their worldly preoccupations and look inward, and then to stop. The 'broken-winged bird' (morgh-e shikasta par) is the speaker, a classical image of the love-disabled: a bird that cannot fly, that has lost the capacity for movement, and is being asked not to be crushed further. The poem ends with a plea addressed to whoever has the power to stop and chooses not to.