‘Cheshm’ is the eye, and in this song it is singular where English wants a plural: ‘cheshm-e man’, my eye, means my eyes, as Persian often lets one stand for the pair. The word does more than see. Said ‘chashm’, it is the reply a Persian speaker gives when agreeing to a request, a yes offered on the eyes. Sarfaraz opens the song by asking the eye for help, ‘cheshm-e man biyâ mano yâri bokon’, because crying is the one thing it can still do.

‘Ghiyâmat’ is the resurrection, the day of judgement at the end of time, from the Arabic root for rising up. In everyday Persian it is the measure of forever: ‘tâ ghiyâmat’, until judgement day, is how long something will never end, and a ‘ghiyâmat’ can also be any uproar or commotion. The refrain leans on it: the one who went will never come again, and the heart wants to cry until ‘ghiyâmat’, for all eternity.

‘Ghorbat’ is the state of being a stranger: away from home, among people who are not yours, from the same root as ‘gharib’, a stranger. The song gives it to the one left behind, ‘mesl-e man ghorbat o mâtam nadâreh’, nobody has ‘ghorbat’ and mourning like me, and sets it beside ‘mâtam’ as if the two were one condition. Dariush recorded the line in Tehran in 1972. He has lived outside Iran since the revolution.

‘Mâtam’ is mourning, the formal grief for a death, with its gatherings and its black. The song paints with it: ‘hameh-jâ rang-e siyâh-e mâtam-e’, everywhere is the black colour of mourning, after the sun has been stolen and dragged under heavy clouds. The lyric never says whether the one who went is dead or only gone; Sarfaraz's own note says he wrote it for his father. The one left behind wears black either way.