Restless in the Beloved's Court
- Poet:
- Hafez
- Era:
- 14th century
- Persian Blues
Music & vocals AI-generated · poem in the public domain
The poem
الا یا ایها الساقی ادر کأساً و ناولها
که عشق آسان نمود اول ولی افتاد مشکلها
مرا در منزل جانان چه امن عیش چون هر دم
جرس فریاد میدارد که بربندید محملها
Ala ya ayyoha-s-saqi — Ghazal No. 1 · Divan of Hafez — the opening ghazal
About the poem
The opening ghazal of Hafez's Divan: a call to the cupbearer to pass the wine, the hard-won truth that love which seemed easy turns to difficulty, and the caravan bell forever warning that it is time to move on.
Meaning & background
«الا یا ایها الساقی ادر کأساً و ناولها» — “Ho, saqi, pass the cup around and offer it” — is the opening line of the very first ghazal in the Divan of Hafez (14th-century Shiraz). Its first hemistich is Arabic and the rest Persian, a bilingual flourish that announces the whole Divan — and its hard-won truth follows at once: love seemed easy at first, then the difficulties fell.
The caravan bell (جرس) keeps crying that it is time to bind the loads and move on: there is no settled rest at the Beloved's station, only the road. The blues — road music, longing music — is a natural home for this ghazal of difficult love.
Standing first in the Divan, no ghazal of Hafez has been more commented upon — and none carries a more famous controversy: tradition holds that the Arabic opening adapts a line attributed to Yazid ibn Muʿawiya, a borrowing debated by commentators for centuries and doubted by most modern scholars, who point instead to the old convention of opening a divan with an Arabic flourish. Either way, the first ghazal announces Hafez's whole program in miniature: the cup, the Beloved, and a road on which ease is never promised.
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