Say Nothing Else
- Poet:
- Mowlana (Rumi)
- Era:
- 13th century
- Neo-Radif Persian Electronic
Music & vocals AI-generated · poem in the public domain
The poem
من غلام قمرم غیر قمر هیچ مگو
پیش من جز سخن شمع و شکر هیچ مگو
I Am the Slave of the Moon · Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi — ghazal 2219
About the poem
Mowlana's ecstatic ghazal of surrender: 'I am the slave of the Moon — speak of nothing but the Moon.' In the Beloved's presence only words of candle and sugar — light and sweetness — are allowed; everything else falls away into silence.
Meaning & background
«من غلام قمرم غیر قمر هیچ مگو» — “I am the slave of the Moon; speak of nothing but the Moon.” This ecstatic ghazal from the Divan-e Shams narrows the whole world to a single presence: before the poet, only words of candle and sugar — light and sweetness — are permitted, and every other subject must fall silent: «هیچ مگو», say nothing else.
The Moon is the Beloved — for Mowlana, inseparable from Shams of Tabriz, the companion whose name the Divan carries. The session sets the ghazal as Neo-Radif Persian Electronic, circling its refrain the way the poem circles its Moon.
The refrain is the poem's argument: «هیچ مگو» — say nothing — closes every line of ghazal 2219, a radif that gradually silences the ghazal itself. Silence is Mowlana's signature move: he ends hundreds of ghazals with the pen-name Khamush, “the Silent One,” because for him the last stage of love-speech is the point where words give out. This ghazal performs that surrender in real time — each verse insisting, ever more musically, that nothing more should be said.
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