“Come, Come” — What Rumi Actually Said in Farsi

This is Episode 3 of Persian Poetry for People Who Don’t Read Poetry. a series where I break down famous Persian poems word by word, so you can actually read them. No literature degree required.

← Ep 2: Sa’di’s Bani Adam | Series Index | Ep 4: Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh →

You’ve seen it on yoga studio walls. You’ve seen it in Instagram bios. You’ve probably seen it tattooed on someone’s ribcage. “Come, come, whoever you are…”. attributed to Rumi, shared millions of times, and almost never shown in its original Farsi. If you’ve ever searched for Rumi poems in Farsi, you know how hard it is to find the actual Persian text with a real breakdown. That changes today.

I’m going to show you exactly what this poem says in Persian, word by word. And here’s the thing that might surprise you. the Farsi is much simpler than the flowery English translations make it sound. If you’re a beginner learning Persian, this is one of the best poems to start with.

First Things First: His Name Isn’t “Rumi”

Well, it is. But it’s complicated.

His full name was Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Balkhi (جلال‌الدین محمد بلخی). He was born in Balkh, which is in present-day Afghanistan. “Rumi” means “from Rome”. but not actual Rome. It refers to the region of Rum, which was Anatolia (modern Turkey), where he spent most of his adult life. So “Rumi” is basically a nickname meaning “the guy who moved to Turkey.”

In Iran, almost nobody calls him Rumi. He’s Mowlavi (مولوی) or Mowlana (مولانا), both meaning “our master.” When Western books call him “Rumi,” most Iranians don’t even register who you’re talking about for a second. And when he gets claimed as a “Turkish poet” or an “Afghan poet”. that’s when things get heated at Iranian dinner tables. He wrote in Persian. His masterwork, the Masnavi, is in Persian. The literary tradition he belongs to is Persian. Iranians feel strongly about this.

For this article, I’ll use both names. Just know that if you’re talking to an Iranian, saying “Mowlavi” will earn you immediate respect points.

The “Come, Come” Poem. What Is It?

The poem is a robaa’i (رباعی). a four-line verse form. Think of it as the Persian equivalent of a haiku: short, tight, and meant to punch you in the chest. A robaa’i has a specific rhyme scheme (AABA), and this one follows it perfectly.

Now, here’s something most English speakers don’t know: there’s genuine scholarly debate about whether Rumi actually wrote this. Some researchers attribute it to an earlier Sufi figure. But it appears in collections associated with Rumi’s work, and culturally, it’s his. Every Iranian knows it as Mowlavi’s. So we’ll go with that.

Let me give you the full poem in Farsi first, then we’ll tear it apart.

The Full Robaa’i in Farsi

باز آ باز آ هر آنچه هستی باز آ
گر کافر و گبر و بت‌پرستی باز آ
این درگه ما درگه نومیدی نیست
صد بار اگر توبه شکستی باز آ

And here’s the transliteration:

Bāz ā, bāz ā, har ānche hasti bāz ā
Gar kāfer o gabr o bot-parasti bāz ā
In dargah-e mā dargah-e nowmidi nist
Sad bār agar towbe shekasti bāz ā

Word-by-Word Breakdown: Line 1

باز آ باز آ هر آنچه هستی باز آ
Bāz ā, bāz ā, har ānche hasti bāz ā

“Come back, come back, whatever you are, come back”

Grammar note: “آ” (ā) is the imperative form of آمدن (āmadan, “to come”). In Persian, the imperative is formed by taking the present stem and adding “ب” (be-) as a prefix. so آمدن becomes “بیا” (biā) in standard modern Persian. But in classical poetry, the shortened form “آ” was common. If you want to understand how Persian verbs work in the imperative mood, I’ve written a full guide on Farsi verb conjugation that covers this.

Notice how “bāz ā” repeats three times in one line. That repetition isn’t accidental. it’s the entire emotional engine of the poem. Come back. Come back. Whatever you are, come back. The English translation “come, come” loses the word “bāz” (back/again), which changes the meaning. This isn’t just an invitation. It’s a re-invitation. You left, and you’re being called back.

Word-by-Word Breakdown: Line 2

گر کافر و گبر و بت‌پرستی باز آ
Gar kāfer o gabr o bot-parasti bāz ā

“Even if you’re an infidel, a fire-worshipper, or an idol-worshipper. come back”

This is the line that made this poem famous in the West, and it’s also the line that gets most distorted. English translations usually soften it to something like “wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving”. which is beautiful, but it’s not what the Farsi says. The original is blunter. It names specific categories of people who were considered the worst in a medieval Islamic context: infidels, Zoroastrians, idol-worshippers.

The power of the poem is in that specificity. It’s not saying “come, whoever you are, even if you’re a bit lost.” It’s saying “come, even if you’re the kind of person everyone else has given up on.” That’s a much more radical statement.

The word “gabr” (گبر) is worth noting. Today it’s considered offensive when used to describe Zoroastrians. But in Rumi’s time, it was the standard (if not exactly polite) term. You’ll encounter it often in classical Persian poetry.

Word-by-Word Breakdown: Line 3

این درگه ما درگه نومیدی نیست
In dargah-e mā dargah-e nowmidi nist

“This threshold of ours is not the threshold of despair”

“Dargah” (درگاه in modern spelling) is one of those Persian words that carries layers. It means a doorway or threshold, but also a royal court or a Sufi gathering place. When Rumi says “this dargah of ours,” he’s talking about a spiritual space. a place where you come to seek. And he’s saying that this place doesn’t deal in hopelessness.

Notice the ezafe construction: “dargah-e mā” (درگهِ ما). “threshold of ours.” And “dargah-e nowmidi”. “threshold of despair.” The ezafe (-e) is that little connector that links nouns together in Persian. You’ll see it everywhere in poetry and daily speech. If you want to understand how it works, check out my guide on spoken vs. written Persian. the ezafe behaves slightly differently in each register.

Word-by-Word Breakdown: Line 4

صد بار اگر توبه شکستی باز آ
Sad bār agar towbe shekasti bāz ā

“Even if you’ve broken your repentance a hundred times. come back”

“Towbe shekastan” (توبه شکستن). “to break one’s repentance”. is a phrase that still lives in modern Persian. When someone says they’re going to quit smoking and then lights up three days later, an Iranian might say “towbe-ato shekasti!” with a laugh. It means you made a promise to change and then didn’t follow through.

“Sad bār” (صد بار). “a hundred times”. is also used constantly in everyday Farsi. “Sad bār behet goftam!” (I told you a hundred times!). The number sad (صد, hundred) shows up in Persian the same way it does in English: as hyperbole for “a lot.”

This final line is what gives the poem its real weight. You didn’t just fail once. You failed a hundred times. You promised to be better and broke that promise over and over. And the answer is still: come back. That’s not generic motivational poster energy. That’s something deeper.

What the English Translations Get Wrong

The most popular English version. the one on all the mugs and wall art. usually goes something like:

“Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving,
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.”

This version, often attributed to Coleman Barks, is beautiful English poetry. But it’s not a translation. It’s a reimagining. Here’s what changed:

“Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving”. None of these words appear in the Farsi. The original says kāfer (infidel), gabr (fire-worshipper), bot-parast (idol-worshipper). The English version replaced religiously loaded terms with poetic, secular ones. It went from “even if society considers you the worst” to “even if you’re a free spirit.” Very different energy.

“Caravan of despair”. The Farsi says “dargah” (threshold/court), not “caravan.” A dargah is a place you arrive at. A caravan is something that moves. The image is completely different.

“A thousand times”. The Farsi says “sad bār”. a hundred times. Small detail, but it shows how casually the text gets altered.

“Lover of leaving”. This phrase doesn’t exist anywhere in the original. It was invented for the English version. It sounds great, but it’s Coleman Barks, not Mowlavi.

I’m not saying the English versions are bad. Some of them are gorgeous poems in their own right. But they’re not Rumi. They’re Rumi fan fiction. And if you actually want to read what Mowlavi wrote, you need the Farsi.

Vocabulary You Can Actually Use

Here’s the good news: several words from this 800-year-old poem are still part of everyday spoken Persian.

That last one. “delam shekast” (دلم شکست). is one of the most common emotional expressions in Persian. You’ll hear it in everything from serious arguments to someone being dramatic about their friend eating the last piece of tahdig.

Why This Poem Matters (Beyond Instagram)

The Western “Rumi industry” has turned Mowlavi into a kind of spiritual greeting card. His poems get stripped of their Islamic and Sufi context, smoothed out into generic feel-good messages, and sold on merchandise. There’s a real conversation happening. both in Iran and in academic circles. about whether this constitutes cultural appropriation or just bad translation.

In Iran, Mowlavi isn’t a lifestyle brand. He’s a towering literary figure whose work is deeply intertwined with Sufi mysticism, Islamic theology, and the Persian literary tradition. The “bāz ā” poem specifically comes from a Sufi context where the “dargah” is a place of spiritual seeking, and the “coming back” is about returning to God after straying. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate it, but pretending that context doesn’t exist flattens the poem into something it’s not.

For Persian learners, though, this poem is a gift. The vocabulary is simple. The grammar is straightforward. The repetition makes it easy to memorize. And once you can read it in the original, you own something that 99% of people who quote “Rumi” on social media never will: the actual words.

FAQs

This poem has 26 words in it. You just learned most of them. Not bad for a Wednesday.

Want to learn the vocabulary from this poem? Try ZabanYar. it’s free and works offline.

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If you want to go deeper into Persian. actually read poems like this on your own, hold conversations, understand what’s being said in Iranian movies. I teach Tehrani Persian one-on-one. We can work through poetry, street-level conversation, or both. Book a trial session with me on Preply and let’s get you reading Mowlavi in the original →

← Ep 2: Sa’di’s Bani Adam | Series Index | Ep 4: Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh →

Explore all our Persian poetry episodes, vocabulary guides, and cultural context in the Persian Poetry for Learners hub. To understand the masnavi form Rumi used here (and how it differs from ghazals and rubaiyat), read our overview of Persian poetry forms.