The prayer rug, trodden on first and then touched with the face, becomes a lesson; the vine's daughter is born with the cup as midwife, and noble hearths scatter in the wind.
The dark curl is the evening of exiles, the bright cheek the morning of home; a heart falling from curl to curl towards China, a mouth no bigger than an imagined point.
Like a shadow, a skirt, a candle, an autumn leaf and a curl, the lover finds no return from anyone at whose feet he has fallen: the long refrain "kimüñ pâyına düşdümse".
The lover who called the curl musk of China admits he said it by error, hatâ; a kiss like a sale without consent, "what is past is past", and a bubble in the sea of love.
Mül mül, kulkul, fülfül, düldül, bülbül: rhymed on doubled syllables, the ghazal holds a mole like pepper wrapped in paper and a rose that weeps for the nightingale.
Tears like coins laid on a barber's mirror after a shave: carrying an Istanbul shop custom into verse, the ghazal adds a marble breast and a nightingale that spurns the juniper.
The rose smiles on all, the Kaaba draws all into its circuit, the shoe takes all for Hızır; in this "kimi görse" ghazal the bath too strips whoever it sees.
The breast should be split by grief's sword into a cleft, a kâf, and the heart made Mount Kaf for love's Anka; a heart held at A‘râf between hope and fear.
Rindâne rindâne, pervâne pervâne, peymâne peymâne: every line of the nine-couplet ghazal ends on a doubled word whose two halves carry different senses.
Chess with its knights and mate, brows standing like a tuğra before the row of lashes, a pen lost in Zulumat, and a mole that multiplies longing tenfold like a zero.
Down black as night becomes the hour of the gathering and the moon-faced beloved is set in Scorpio: an obscure ghazal whose refrain "olmağ ile" gives a reason in every couplet.
Hilâl is both the slender moon and a toothpick; toothpick and tooth-stick serve the mouth like two servants of one master, and the mouth is the theologians' indivisible atom.
A ney player bending his neck as he blows, scars that rise to the face, down cold as deep winter, and a pen serving as çavuş to set the divan of thought in order.
Head full of fire, body thin as a pipe stem, the lover touches the beloved's lips only as a pipe's mouthpiece does; a two-tongued pen and an ostrich that carries no load.
A youth with his first moustache and the hair's breadth between the four schools of law meet in a single line; a lamp by the mihrab and the sun entering Virgo.
Down has appeared on the cheeks, beauty's zevâl begins and the lover's turn draws near: in this "az kaldı" ghazal the fast is ending and the feast is announced.
In Islamic inheritance law the male share is double; Sâhib builds a jest that applies this to the youths' share of beauty, though the start of the line could not be read.
The wine drinker sees king and beggar with the same eye: Jamshid's world-showing cup, a skiff in the whirlpool of grief, and a champion in a ruby robe who routs sorrow.
Kazancı, miyâncı, nişancı, doğancı: rhymed on the Turkish suffix of trades, the ghazal presents the heart as an officer at the court of the king of love.
Longing for the stature becomes the cypress, yearning for the cheek the candle's oil, passion for the mole the tulip's scar; and a rival who swears left-handed.
The almanac looks ahead and the chronicles look back; in a ghazal that draws counsel from objects come the alchemist's crucible, upstart branches and a chronogram line at the beloved's feet.
An eye wet with pearls of tears is like the mouth of a seven-year-old who has cut his teeth; a mirror that steals images, checkmate on the board, a head held to the stone.
Two lips merge like two letters of one kind in assimilation: a madrasa-trained poet tells of a kiss through a rule of grammar, and a Damascus caravan sets out for Aleppo.
Kanun, kemençe and bow-hairs that lend each other an ear make a whole consort in one line; the pen's prostrations of forgetfulness and two-faced paper share the ghazal.
A response to Hattî, who led the way in this new valley: a lover bent into a bridge arch, a folding lantern, a weekly shave and a sigh carved like a chronogram into stone.
Wording and meaning, exception and illâ, pronoun and antecedent: in a ghazal woven from Arabic grammar the brows become the tuğra's hançere and the curls its zülfe.
The linen shirt that draws the beloved to its breast turns into linen halva with the sweetness of union; threads become gold wire, and a chin's apple becomes a peach at a kiss.
The down has sprouted, the adornment is done: a poem built on "bitmek" as both to sprout and to end, closing on its own first line as the last Turkish ghazal of the thesis.
Before praising the Prophet the poet must cleanse his heart of hypocrisy and his words of plagiarism, slips and errors: a two-couplet kıt‘a near the opening of the divan.
Blackened with ink, the pen is a black slave: in one line tahrîr, kitâbet and kat‘ describe both trimming a nib and a contract by which a slave buys his freedom.
The ring of the lover's eye is an archer's thumb-ring that looses the arrow of the beloved's glance; even the killing sword is called "hoş kadem", lucky.
Counsel to reach union with the beauties by tedrîc, step by step: a six-line piece placed among the rubais in the thesis, though it stands closer to the kıt‘a.
The down is the writing on beauty's certificate, and the beloved who shaves it has scraped the document and made it void: a jest in the language of the judge's court.
Pilgrims of old brought back turban cloth, those of Sâhib's day give only aloeswood; and if ‘ûd is read as "return" the jest grows sharper still.
The pen gives all it takes from the inkwell to the page and keeps only a dirty hand and a black face: a go-between who is generous but out of luck.
Grief enters the tree of existence with axe and saw, and time cuts it up like a carpenter; "keser" names both the tool and the work it does.
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