The Playful Line: A Reflection on a Ghazal by Saeb Tabrizi

Few poets of the Persian world blend subtle reasoning and passionate mysticism as elegantly as Saeb Tabrizi. A master of the Indian style (سبک هندی), he often turns abstract ideas into shimmering, tangible images.
This ghazal, brief yet layered, is a dialogue between the mind and the heart, between composure and madness, between the one who observes and the one who burns.

1. چند بتوان خاک زد در چشم، عقل و هوش را؟ / یا رب انصافی بده آن خطِ بازیگوش را

How long can I keep throwing dust into the eyes of reason and sense?
O Lord, grant me justice against that playful line of hair!

The opening line begins with protest, not against cruelty, but against beauty itself. The “line of hair” (khaṭṭ-e bāzīgūsh) refers to the faint, delicate hair above the beloved’s lip, a feature that drives lovers and poets alike to madness.
Saeb’s speaker can no longer fool his reason by pretending indifference. The mind, symbol of restraint, tries to keep its eyes clear, but love’s dust blinds it.

The verse carries Saeb’s typical wit of balance: reason and beauty are placed in opposition, but with humor and affection. Love is a game in which even the most disciplined mind must lose, and the poet asks heaven not for victory, but for fairness, as if saying: “If beauty will play, let love not always lose.”

2. کارِ من با سرو‌بالایی است کز بس سرکشی / می‌شمارد حلقهٔ بیرونِ در، آغوش …