Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Gözlerüm ey lâle-ruh hicründe kanlar dökdiler
‘Iyş içün bezm-i belâya erguvânlar dökdiler
Aldılar nâziklük ile agzı sırrından haber
Gonçeye gülşende sûsenler zebânlar dökdiler

In English

1. O tulip-cheeked one, my eyes shed blood in your absence; to enliven the gathering of grief and affliction they scattered Judas-tree blossoms there.

2. In the rose garden the irises poured out sweet words to the rosebud and delicately learned from it the secret of her mouth.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

These two couplets are taken from the beginning of a ghazal (gazel). The first couplet is the opening couplet (matla), and both its lines end with the redif (refrain word) "dökdiler". The rhyme is the sound "-ânlar" in "kanlar, erguvânlar, zebânlar". The rest of the ghazal and its pen-name couplet are unknown. The fragment appears in Kınalızâde's biographical anthology of poets (tezkire) and with the same text in Beyânî. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar gives only the opening couplet, quoted from Kâfzâde Fâizî's Zübdetü'l-Eş'âr, with a different second line: "Meclis-i derd ü belâya erguvânlar dökdüler". In this reading the words "for pleasure" drop out and the gathering becomes directly "the gathering of grief and affliction". The edition of the tezkire does not indicate the metre. To whom and on what occasion it was written is unknown.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal rests chiefly on the verb "dökmek" (to pour, shed, scatter) in the refrain. The poet uses this single verb in a different sense in each line. For the eyes to "shed blood" is to weep bloody tears from the pain of separation. "Scattering Judas-tree blossoms" is strewing the red flowers of the Judas tree over a gathering; the redness of the tears merges with the colour of these flowers, and the lover's pain becomes the decoration of a festive gathering. The contradiction between "the gathering of affliction" and "ıyş", pleasure and merriment, is deliberate: for the lover, merriment is a table laid with grief. Addressing the beloved as "lâle-ruh" (tulip-cheeked) creates a congruence of images (tenasüp) of tulip, blood and Judas-tree through the colour red.

In the second couplet the scene moves to the rose garden. In divan poetry the beloved's small mouth is likened to an unopened rosebud; the mouth is so small that it is often declared "non-existent", and this non-existence is spoken of as a secret. The iris, because its leaves are likened to tongues, is known as the "ten-tongued" flower that nevertheless does not speak. The poet combines these two images: the irises have drawn close to the bud and "poured out tongues" to it, that is, spoken sweetly to it, delicately drawn it out and learned the secret of the beloved's mouth. Here the verb "dökmek" in the refrain reaches its third sense through the idiom "dil dökmek" (to coax with sweet words). That the iris, silent despite its tongues, should for once speak and extract a secret adds a light surprise to the couplet.

Historical Context

Kınalızâde and Beyânî record these couplets as the poetry of the judge Ânî known as Zeyrekzâde. In the same entry Kınalızâde writes that the poet died in 977 (1569-70). Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar, however, quotes the opening couplet as the poetry of Seyrekzâde Ânî Ahmed Çelebi, whom he says was born in Amasya. The Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, taking the couplets from Kınalızâde, assigns them to Zeyrekzâde Mehmed Ânî Çelebi of Bursa. The attribution of the couplets therefore depends on the question of the poet's identity. How the two men came to be confused is set out in detail in the article Ânî (Zeyrekî).

Bibliography

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