Hafez's payāmé naseem

salām bé hamegee! Hello and welcome to the very final lesson on our selection from the poem payāmé naseem by Hafez! This is the last part we’ll be learning from this poem, and after this, your goal is to memorize our selection…yes, the whole thing…and make a video of yourself reciting it in a beautiful location. We’ll have a link on the show notes of this episode where you can upload your video and watch the selection from all the other Chai and Conversation members that have completed this wonderful task. 

So to start this lesson, we’re going to listen to my khālé farnāz recite the entire poem. You should be trying to recite it along with her as you’re listening. Remember, listening to the poem recited is one of the best ways to learn it. We’ve also included a link to Shajarian’s beautiful rendition of it in classical music form for you to listen to as well on the show notes for this lesson. But for now, here’s Farnaz:

zé kooyé yār meeyāyad naseemé bādé noroozee.

az een bād ar madad khāhee cherāghé del bar-afroozee!

chō gol gar khordeyee dāree khodā rā sarfé eshrat kon

ké ghāroon rā ghalat-hā dād sowdāyé zar-andoozee!

bé sahrā rō ké az dāman ghobaré gham beeafshānee!

bé golzār āy k’az bolbol ghazal goftan beeyāmoozee!

jodā shod yāré sheereenat, konoon tanhā nesheen, ay sham’,

ké hokmé āsemān een ast agar sāzee ō gar soozee.

may-ee dāram chō jān sāfee ō soofee meekonad aybash.

khodāyā heech āghel-rā mabādā bakhté bad roozee!

Wonderful, and now, we’re on the very last lines of the poem. Now, I have to admit, these two lines, although they don’t have difficult vocabulary, I do believe are pretty difficult to understand. I’m interested in the discussion that will come out of interpreting these lines and really understanding them. So here are our two lines:

may-ee dāram chō jān sāfee ō soofee meekonad aybash.

khodāyā heech āghel-rā mabādā bakhté bad roozee!

All right, so the first line says “may-ee dāram chō jān sāfee ō soofee meekonad aybash.” So, the word may comes up in Classical Persian poetry so, so often; it means ‘wine’. So in Classical Persian poetry, there are so many different layers and levels to things. We talked about symbolism in the Persian poetry, how, for example, flowers have certain meanings and symbolize certain things. Wine is the same way. Generally, drunkenness is brought up so often. It can be taken in a literal sense, but it can also be taken in a spiritual sense. That the state of drunkenness is the state of losing oneself, losing one's ego, becoming closer to God. So in this case also, “may-ee dāram,” when we add -ee to a word, we are referring to a particular one of that thing, so “may-ee dāram,” ‘I have a wine’. “dāram” is the first person conjugation for ‘to have’. I have a particular wine. may-ee dāram.

may-ee dāram

“chō,” as we heard before, means ‘like’. chō.

chō 

Then “jān sāfee”…the word “jān” is something you hear often in Persian conversation, for instance, after someone’s name. So someone could call me leylā jān. This means something along the lines of ‘Leyla dear’, but the word jān literally means ‘life’ or ‘soul’. jān.

jān

Then “sāfee,” this means a ‘colander’, or something that purifies. sāfee.

sāfee

So in Persian, the word “sāf” means ‘straight’ or ‘pure’. sāf.

sāf

And a “sāfee,” like I said, could mean a ‘colander’, one of those kitchen tools that strains something and takes the impurities out. sāfee.

sāfee

So “may-ee dāram chō jān sāfee." This means ‘I have a wine that is like a purifier of the soul’, so ‘the wine that purifies the soul’. may-ee dāram chō jān sāfee.

may-ee dāram chō jān sāfee

Then “ō soofee meekonad aybash.” “ō,” of course, means ‘and’. ō.

ō

So this can be pronounced either as “ō” or as “va”; both are used often. va.

va

But here we have “ō”: “ō soofee meekonad aybash.” So “soofee” is the same word as in English, a Sufi, someone who practices Sufism, the mystical sect of Islam. soofee.

soofee

And I love that wordplay there- sāfee and soofee: sāfee, a colander or purifier, and then a soofee. So “soofee meekonad aybash.” “meekonad” is the present tense third person conjugation of ‘to do’. meekonad.

meekonad

And “ayb” is the word for fault. ayb.

ayb

“meekonad aybash” literally means ‘does fault with it’. The “-ash” shows that the ayb is referring to our subject, the may or the wine. So “meekonad aybash,” ‘does find fault with it’, the wine. meekonad aybash.

meekonad aybash

So the Sufi complains about it, find fault with it, says that it’s wrong. soofee meekonad aybash. 

soofee meekonad aybash

So the full sentence is I have a wine that is like a purifier of my soul, and the Sufi deems it wrong. may-ee dāram chō jān sāfee.

may-ee dāram chō jān sāfee

ō soofee meekonad aybash.

ō soofee meekonad aybash

All right, and the last part is: 

khodāyā heech āghel-rā mabādā bakhté bad roozee!

Okay, so this last sentence begins as a plea. He goes “khodāyā!”

khodāyā

And the word “khodā” by itself means ‘God’. khodā.

khodā

And “khodāyā” is basically calling out to God, like ‘oh God!’. khodāyā!

khodāyā

So Iranians will often say this when they’re exasperated, just like you would say in English ‘oh god!’ or ‘dear lord’, for example. khodāyā!

khodāyā

Then “heech āghel-rā.” So “heech” means ‘none’. heech.

heech

And “āghel” simply means ‘wise’. āghel.

āghel

But it refers to a wise person. āghel.

āghel

So “heech āghel-rā” means ‘no wise person’. “-rā” is just a direct object marker, meaning we’re talking about a particular person, not just any generic person. heech āghel-rā.

heech āghel-rā

And then “mabādā bakht.” “mabādā” is a conjunction word and translates as ‘lest’ in English, but it’s a little complicated to translate. It’s like ‘to prevent something, lest this happens’.  mabādā.

mabādā

And “bakht” means ‘fortune’ or ‘fate’. bakht.

bakht

Another way “bakht” is said in current conversation is “āghebat.” āghebat.

āghebat

I would also translate this as ‘your future’, ‘your fate’. So again, bakht.

bakht

So ‘lest he give the fortune’, so ‘he mustn’t give the fortune’. mabādā bakht.

mabādā bakht

And, finally, “bad roozee.” “bad” means the same thing as in English: ‘bad’. bad.

bad

And “roozee" means ‘days’. roozee.

roozee

So “mabādā bakhté bad roozee” means something along the lines of ‘lest he have the fortune of bad days’. So the full last line says ‘oh God, may no wise person be given the fortune of bad days!’. Now, Fared in his translation translated this last part as ‘oh God, all these enlightened ones, don't bestow upon them this misfortune of blindness!’

So in a way he was insinuating that the “āghel,” or ‘wise’, in this phrase isn’t really supposed to be taken literally, but rather as a kind of jab, like people who see themselves as enlightened. So in a way, this line is referring back to the Sufi of the last line, saying that this is a person who sees themselves as wise, but this person finds fault with something that is actually purifying. So ‘God, don’t give the wise person the misfortune of bad days, of thinking they’re enlightened but being so wrong!’ 

So that’s an interpretation, but I’m so curious to hear your thoughts after hearing the full selection. There’s so much to unpack in this poem, and I think that’s the beauty of Hafez; it can be interpreted in so many ways and applied to so many different situations. And you might find yourself in a new situation, and all of a sudden a line from Hafez comes to you, and you suddenly understand it in a new way. I think that’s quite common.

But with this, we have come to an end of our study of this poem. Now all that’s left is for you to memorize it completely, recite it for us, and, of course, share with us your thoughts. I can’t wait to see your submissions! 

As you know, you can listen to this entire poem line by line as read by my aunt Farnaz on the lesson page; we’ll have all that linked to on the show notes.

Thanks you so much for coming on this beautiful journey with me! Until next time, and until our next beautiful poem, khodāhāfez from Leyla.