Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

İki ṣūret ḫūbdur Ḥaḳdan baña olsa naṣīb
Ol mehüñ yüzini görmek görmemek rūy-ı raḳīb
Ḫāl-i müşgīn ‘ārıż-ı kāfūrun üzre ṣanasın
Hindu-yi miskīndurur kim Rūma düşmişdür ġarīb
İtmegil żāyi‘ baña sen yoḳ yire dermānuñı
Derdmend-i ‘ışḳa dermān mı bulunur ey ṭabīb
Pür degül bülbül-i tende kim güli vaṣf itmege
Başdan ayaġa zebān olmış çemende ‘andelīb
Ey Basīrī ser-be-ser ḫākister olur ḳāyināt
‘Āleme ger düşse āhuñ āteşinden bir lehīb

In English

1. Two things are fair, if God would grant them to me: to see the face of that moon, and not to see the face of the rival.

2. The musky black mole on her camphor-white cheek is, you would think, a poor Indian who has fallen as a stranger into the land of Rum. (India stands for blackness, Rum for whiteness.)

3. O physician, do not waste your remedies on me in vain; can a cure be found for one stricken with love?

4. In the meadow the nightingale has become tongue from head to foot to describe the rose. (The first line is not clear as read in the edition: the likely sense of "Pür degül bülbül-i tende" is that the single tongue in the body is not enough to describe the rose, so the nightingale has become all tongue. The reading of the words is not certain.)

5. O Basîrî, if a single flame from the fire of your sigh fell upon the world, the whole universe would turn to ashes from end to end.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets in the remel family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün"; the edition does not state the metre, which emerges from scansion. The ghazal has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is the sound "-īb": naṣīb, raḳīb, ġarīb, ṭabīb, ‘andelīb, lehīb. The first line of the fourth couplet, as printed in the edition, does not sit well in sense and also limps in the metre; a problem of reading or typesetting is likely here. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is number XIII in Ahmet Kartal's edition. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet sets side by side the two things the lover asks of God: to see the beloved's face and not to see the rival's. The correspondence between "seeing" and "not seeing", between "mehüñ yüzi", the face of the moon, and "rūy-ı raḳīb", the face of the rival, divides the couplet into two equal halves. This balance between the language of prayer and an everyday wish also gives the couplet a light touch of humour.

The second couplet rests on one of the best known colour contrasts of divan poetry. The beloved's cheek is white as camphor, the mole on it black and fragrant as musk. The black mole is likened to an Indian slave, the white cheek to the land of Rum; the mole is a "miskīn", poor, and "ġarīb", stranger, Indian who has fallen far from home. The contrast between India and Rum, black and white, joins with the congruence of scents (tenasüp) between musk and camphor. The closeness in sound between "miskīn" and "misk" also gives the couplet the air of a pun. According to the biographical anthologies of poets (tezkire), Basîrî too was a poet who came from the Persian lands and lived in Rum, that is, in the Ottoman realm; the stranger mole fallen into Rum may therefore be thought to carry an echo of exile, but this is only one possible reading.

In the third couplet the lover tells the physician not to waste his remedies; the pain of one sick with love does not pass with medicine. The fourth couplet works the motif of the rose and the nightingale. To describe the rose the nightingale has become tongue from head to foot; a single tongue is not enough, and the whole body has turned into tongue. In the closing couplet the lover's sigh turns into fire. If a single flame of it fell upon the world, the universe would be ashes from end to end. The congruence of images between sigh and fire, flame and ash closes the ghazal on a note of hyperbole.

Bibliography

Online sources