ساقی

The word ساقی sits inside the larger Persian poetic vocabulary of mystical wine: می (mey, wine), پیاله (piyâle, cup), میخانه (meykhâne, the tavern), خرابات (kharâbât, the ruined-tavern of the Sufi). All of these words function on two levels in classical Persian poetry. On one level they describe a literal scene: a feast, a tavern, a drinking party. On another level they describe inner experience: the wine of divine love, the cup of the heart, the tavern of mystical surrender. The saqi is the figure who connects the two worlds, the one who pours the wine that does both jobs at once. To read Hafez literally as a drinking poet is to miss the entire frame. To read him as purely allegorical is to flatten the sensual texture of the poems. Iranian readers hold both at once.