“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”

-Rumi

Poets, time and again, have tried to pen the mystery of love in words, knowing very well that words can express love, and yet they never stopped writing about it. Love as desire, as a longing, as a passion and union with the beloved have been the themes of centuries of writings on love. Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings that can’t be expressed in prose. Poetry makes space for the indiscernible. Therefore, the reader and listener can fill in these blanks with their own imaginations.

In memory of the love lost and appreciation of the love found, we bring you a collection of handpicked poems from India and Persia spanning from the 3rd century BCE to contemporary poetry.

Eshgham features the works of beloved poets, such as Forough Farrokhzad, Kalidasa, Akka Mahadevi, Ghalib, Rabindranath Tagore, Umashankar Joshi, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Kabir, Rumi, Amir Khusrao, Grace, Nizami Ganjavi, Tukaram, Hafez, Bhavabhuti, Vikram Seth, Sohrab Sepheri, Surdas, Shamz Tabrezi, Janabai, Ruth Vanita, Amrita Pritam, Andal, Tamil Sangam Poetry and Gathasaptasati Poems.