ز دستم بر نمیخیزد
Ze Dastam Bar Namekhezad
“It Is Beyond Me”
It Is Beyond Me — Saadi's ghazal of love past the point of choice: the speaker cannot sit a single moment without the beloved, loves against the judgment of the whole world, and would drop the shield before the beloved's drawn sword.
About This Recording
It is beyond me to sit one moment without you — and the opening line is a Persian idiom of sheer incapacity. The hands won't rise; the will that would move them has dissolved. Saadi turns that helplessness into a credential: only love thorough enough to stop you acting is love worth the name.
By the second couplet he has cast the lover as Farhad, the mountain-cutter of the Shirin legend who dies for love, and staked out the ground without hedging: I love you against the judgment of the whole world. Zahir matches the poem's stillness. He reaches for no drama, letting the song move quietly through its surrender, the voice carrying a man fully present and fully unable to move.
Lyrics
English Translation
It is beyond me to sit a single moment without you I want to see no face but yours
From the first day I knew that in falling for Shirin I must, like Farhad, wash my hands of my sweet life
I love you against the judgment of everyone in the world Though it mock my reason, though it breach my faith
And if you take up the sword, I will throw down my shield before you For without a sword you have already slain me — with those silver wrists
متن اصلی
ز دستم بر نمیخیزد که یک دم بی تو بنشینم به جز رویت نمیخواهم که روی هیچ کس بینم
من اول روز دانستم که با شیرین درافتادم که چون فرهاد باید شست دست از جان شیرینم
تو را من دوست میدارم خلاف هر که در عالم اگر طعنه است در عقلم اگر رخنه است در دینم
و گر شمشیر برگیری سپر پیشت بیندازم که بی شمشیر خود کشتی به ساعدهای سیمینم
Poetic Source & Adaptation
Saadi Shirazi
Saadi Shirazi, Divan, ghazal 423 (Foroughi edition; Wikisource/Ganjoor). The opening hemistich — 'it does not rise from my hands to sit one moment without you' — is a Persian idiom of incapacity: the speaker's helplessness is not weakness but the credential of complete love. The Farhad and Shirin allusion in the second bayt places the speaker in the lineage of Persian literature's great doomed lovers.