The Sweetness of Pain: Saadi’s Song of the Unforgetting Heart

There are loves that illuminate the world,
and there are loves that burn it down.
Saadi Shirazi, the gentle sage of Shiraz, sings of the second kind,
the love that refuses to die, that feeds on its own wounds,
that becomes both poison and cure.

تا بود بار غمت بر دل بی‌هوش مرا
سوز عشقت ننشاند ز جگر جوش مرا

نگذرد یاد گل و سنبلم اندر خاطر
تا به خاطر بود آن زلف و بناگوش مرا

شربتی تلختر از زهر فراقت باید
تا کند لذت وصل تو فراموش مرا

هر شبم با غم هجران تو سر بر بالین
روزی ار با تو نشد دست در آغوش مرا

بی دهان تو اگر صد قدح نوش دهند
به دهان تو که زهر آید از آن نوش مرا

سعدی اندر کف جلاد غمت می‌گوید
بنده‌ام بنده به کشتن ده و مفروش مرا

His ghazal begins like the quiet confession of one who has long since surrendered to the flame:

“As long as the weight of your sorrow rests upon my senseless heart,
The fire of your love will not cease its boiling in my soul.”

Love here is not a passing fever. It is the slow, endless burn,
a heat that outlasts reason, sleep, and even time itself.
Saadi’s “senseless heart” is the mystic’s heart, stripped of logic,
emptied of self-preservation.
It beats not for its own life, but for the echo of the Beloved’s presence.
Every sigh becomes a flame; every tear, a spark in the dark.

This is the condition of …