I never imagined I would come to understand this enduring ghazal in such a way, or that we would live through a time when every word of it would repeat the history of our shared suffering: people holding the beloved’s tresses in their hands, intoxicated by the pain of mourning, dancing in the middle of the square as they accompany their beloved on the final journey with such love.

Who would not wish to be accompanied at their departure with such love? Why had I never understood that this ghazal is an elegy—an elegy of love, made from the material of our historical pain?

Every word carries meaning today.
Every word is lived today.

Show your face, for I long for garden and rose garden.
Open your lips, for I long for abundant sweetness.

O sun of beauty, come for a moment from behind the cloud,
for I long for that radiant, shining face.
...

By God, without you the city becomes a prison to me;
I long for wandering in mountain and desert.

A cup of wine in one hand and the beloved’s tresses in the other—
I long for such a dance in the middle of the square.

Yesterday the sheikh wandered through the city with a lamp,
saying: “I am weary of demon and beast; I long for a human being.”

They said: “We have searched; such a one cannot be found.”
He said: “It is precisely what cannot be found that I desire.”