Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Ey beni mihr ü vefā bigi ferāmūş eyleyen
Nālemi işitmeyüp ġayruñ sözin gūş eyleyen
Sāġar-ı çeşmümden içdükce ciger ḳanın direm
‘Işḳuña ey ġayr ile her dem ḳadeḥ nūş eyleyen
Ḫıżr gibi ‘ālem içinde bulur ‘ömr-i ebed
Bir gice sen sīmber māhı der-āġūş eyleyen
Cübbesini ṣabrımuñ derdile ṣad-çāk eyledi
Sen semen-ruḫsāreyi serv-i ḳabā pūş eyleyen
Ey Baṣīrī ‘ālemi ġarḳ itdi ser-tā-ser meger
Dil tenūrından yaşuñ ṭūfānıdur cūş eyleyen

In English

1. O you who have forgotten me as love and faithfulness are forgotten, who do not hear my lament and lend your ear to another's words.

2. O you who every moment drink a cup with another, whenever I drink the blood of my liver from the goblet of my eye, I say "to your love". (The lover raises a toast to the beloved's love as he drinks his bloody tears, while the beloved drinks wine with the rival.)

3. Whoever for one night takes you, the silver-bodied moon, in his arms finds eternal life in the world like Khidr.

4. O jasmine-cheeked cypress who has put on a robe, (grief) has torn the cloak of my patience into a hundred pieces with pain. (The couplet is not entirely clear as read in the edition; the accusative ending in "semen-ruḫsāreyi" and the construction "serv-i ḳabā pūş" do not fit. The likely sense is that the robed beloved has torn the lover's cloak of patience to shreds.)

5. O Basîrî, what has drowned the world from end to end is perhaps the deluge of your tears boiling up from the oven of the heart. (The Qur'an tells that Noah's flood began when the oven boiled over.)

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 redif (refrain word) is "eyleyen"; the rhyme is the sound "-ūş": ferāmūş, gūş, nūş, āġūş, pūş, cūş. All the rhyme words are Persian and form compound verbs with the auxiliary "eylemek". The word order of the fourth couplet does not quite fit in sense in the edition; the reading is not certain. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is number XVI in Ahmet Kartal's edition. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The refrain "eyleyen", the one who does, turns most of the ghazal into an address to the beloved. In the opening couplet the beloved is the one who has forgotten the lover as "mihr ü vefā", love and faithfulness, are forgotten; just as love and faithfulness have been forgotten in the world, so has the lover. The beloved does not hear his lament and lends an ear to another's words. The contrast between not hearing and lending an ear shows plainly where the beloved's attention lies.

In the second couplet a drinking party is set up, but with two different cups. The beloved drinks wine with another at every moment; the lover drinks the blood of his liver from the goblet of his eye, that is, he sheds bloody tears. "‘Işḳuña", to your love, is used like the wish spoken when raising a cup at a gathering. The congruence of images (tenasüp) between eye and goblet, blood and wine places the lover's mourning opposite the beloved's pleasure.

In the third couplet it is said that whoever embraces the silver-bodied, moon-faced beloved for one night will attain eternal life like Khidr. The tradition that Khidr found the water of immortality in the land of darkness accords with the word "gice", night. In the fourth couplet the dress of the dervish and the dress of the court face each other. The lover's patience is likened to a cloak and has been torn to a hundred pieces by pain; the beloved is a cypress who has put on a robe. The contrast between the cloak and the robe sets the patient dervish beside the finely dressed beauty.

The closing couplet alludes to Noah's flood. The Qur'an tells that the flood began when the oven boiled over. The poet says that the deluge which has drowned the world from end to end may be the flood of tears boiling up from the oven of the heart. The congruence of images between oven and fire, boiling and deluge gathers the fire of love's pain and the abundance of tears into a single picture.

Bibliography

Online sources