Ghazal · 17th–18th century

No Room for “You”

Bidel Dehlaviبیدل دهلوی

تو کار خویش کن اینجا تویی در من نمی‌گنجد

Go about your own business: here, no “you” will fit in me;

گریبان عالمی دارد که در دامن نمی‌گنجد

here is a collar as wide as a world, which no skirt can hold.

گرفتم نوبهاری پیش خود نشو و نما سرکن

Granted you are a new spring: grow and flourish by yourself;

بساط‌آرایی ناز تو در گلخن نمی‌گنجد

the spread of your airs and graces will not fit in a furnace room.

چو بوی گل وداع کسوت هستی‌ست اظهارت

Like the rose’s scent, to show yourself is to bid the garment of being farewell;

سر مویی اگر بالی به پیراهن نمی‌گنجد

spread your wing a hair’s breadth, and you will not fit in the shirt.

به یکتایی‌ست ربطی تار و پود بی‌نیازی را

The warp and weft of self-sufficiency are bound in such oneness

که در آغوش چاک اینجا سر سوزن نمی‌گنجد

that here not even a needle’s point fits into the embrace of a tear.

بساط ماجرای سایه و خورشید طی‌ کردم

I have folded up the whole affair of the shadow and the sun:

در آن خلوت که او باشد، خیال من نمی‌گنجد

in that seclusion where He is, even the thought of me finds no room.

From: The Divan of Bidel
Translation: Persiahaus Editors
Source: Draft translation from the Ganjoor text
Persian text: Ganjoor

A note for readers

The opening of a ghazal on the refrain ‘does not fit’ (nemi-gonjad), on the Sufi theme that the self must vanish before God: where He is, there is no room even for the thought of ‘me’, as the shadow disappears in the sun. The ‘furnace room’ is the stoke-hole of a bathhouse, the humblest of places. The first line is hard to construe; we read its ‘you’ as the separate self that the poet sends away.