Do Not Sleep Without the Beloved Tonight

🌙 بی‌یار مخسب امشب | Do Not Sleep Without the Beloved Tonight

There are nights when the heart trembles with remembrance, when silence itself becomes music, and every breath whispers a single name.
In such nights, love is not a concept, nor an emotion, but a living presence, a fire that refuses to let the soul rest.

In this luminous ghazal, Jalal al-Din Rumi calls out to the Beloved: “Do not let us be without You tonight. Do not sleep without the Beloved.”
It is both a lover’s plea and a mystic’s command to himself: Stay awake in love. Stay awake in remembrance.

بی یار مهل ما را بی‌یار مخسب امشب

“Do not leave us without the Beloved; do not sleep without the Beloved tonight.”

From the very first verse, Rumi establishes a sacred tension. He speaks in the language of supplication, yet also of awakening.
The “Beloved” (Yar) is not a human figure here, it is the Divine, the Essence, the One whose presence sustains existence. To be without the Beloved is to fall into forgetfulness, into the sleep of the world.

Every mystic fears this sleep, that moment when the fire cools, when remembrance fades, when the connection loosens. So Rumi cries out:
“Do not let me drift back into separation.”

He begs not only for divine nearness but for the awareness of that nearness.
It is possible to live in the presence of God and yet remain blind. The poet’s plea, then, is a cry …