Ârif, Güfte 3: Küçücüksün diyerek ḳaş-ı kemânım büyüdüň

Güfte 3 — Küçücüksün diyerek ḳaş-ı kemânım büyüdüň

Amasya05 Editorial Board • Editor: Mevlüt Erdem Öztürk • 01 October 2026 • Updated: 13 October 2026 • 3 min reading

The opening couplet of Ârif's Güfte in the Merzifon Cönkü: a beloved who grew from a child into a cypress; original text, English prose and commentary.

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Feilâtün feilâtün feilâtün feilün

Küçücüksün diyerek ḳaş-ı kemânım büyüdüň
Uzayıp servi gibi tâze fidânım büyüdüň

In English

1. While (I loved you) saying "you are so little", O you with brows like a bow, you have grown up; O my young sapling, stretching up like a cypress, you have grown up.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is recorded in the cönk as a güfte. A güfte is a song lyric written to be set to music; in cönks it is often recorded without the name of the mode (makam). Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the opening couplet of this poem. The refrain is "büyüdüň"; the rhyme is the "-ânım" sound in "kemânım / fidânım". The identification of the metre is ours; as is usual in the aruz poems of folk poets, some syllables may not fit the pattern exactly. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet describes the surprise of a lover who notices that the beloved has grown up. The expression "küçücüksün diyerek" (saying "you are so little") suggests a gaze that knew the beloved as a child and always saw him as small; yet the beloved has grown and stretched up "like a cypress". Calling the beloved "kaş-ı kemân", bow-browed, and "tâze fidân", a young sapling, expresses youth and beauty together. The sapling's turning into a cypress links to divan poetry's matching of the beloved's stature with the cypress. The conversational manner of the couplet and the refrain "büyüdüň" (you have grown) make it well suited to a song lyric.

Historical Context

The poem is recorded under the pen name "Ârif" in the Merzifon Cönkü introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. The cönk contains eleven aruz poems by Ârif: güftes, dîvâns, a ghazal and a semai. Ârif is the poet whose güftes are given most space in the cönk. The article gives no information about the poet; the poet's identity and the century in which he lived have not been determined. Since the cönk is thought to have been compiled in Merzifon within the literary circle of Eyüb Sabrî, the poet may have been one read or living in that circle. For details, see the page on Ârif. The poem is on page 13 of the cönk and page 551 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.