Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fe‘ilün

Çarḫdur çeşmümi ḳılan pür-āb
Göreyin döne döne ola ḫarāb
Ser-i kūyuñdurur baña mescid
Ayaġun izidür baña miḥrāb
Seni görmek düşümde mümkin idi
N’eyleyem kim gözüme gelmez ḫᵛāb
Görmege irtifā‘ını yüzüñüñ
Çeşmüm olmış bi‘aynih usṭurlāb
Güle düşdi göñül lebüñ göricek
Ne müferriḥ şarāb olur bu şarāb
Ḳandan olmış Baṣīrī müjgānuñ
Pāre pāre cigerle sīḫ u kebāb

In English

1. It is the wheel that fills my eye with water; may I see it, turning and turning, fall to ruin. ("Çarh" is both the wheel of heaven and the water-wheel that fills its buckets as it turns.)

2. The head of your street is my mosque; the print of your foot is my mihrab.

3. Seeing you in my dreams was possible; what can I do, sleep does not come to my eyes.

4. To see the altitude of your face, my eye has become exactly an astrolabe. (The astrolabe is the astronomical instrument that measures the height of the sun and stars above the horizon; the face is likened to the sun.)

5. On seeing your lip, the heart fell to the rose; what a cheering wine this wine is. (The couplet can be read in two ways: "güle düşmek" may mean to fall for the rose or to fall to laughing. The red lip is likened to wine.)

6. O Basîrî, whence have your eyelashes become skewer and kebab with liver in pieces? (The eyelashes are likened to skewers and the lover's liver, cut to pieces, to kebab; the word "ḳandan" can be read both as "whence" and as "from blood". In the line, "müjgānuñ", your eyelashes, should belong to the beloved; since the address is to Basîrî, the sentence is not entirely regular.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of six couplets in the hafif family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "fā‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fe‘ilün"; the edition does not state the metre, which emerges from scansion. This short, flowing pattern gives the couplets a pace close to speech. The ghazal has no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is the sound "-āb": pür-āb, ḫarāb, miḥrāb, ḫᵛāb, usṭurlāb, şarāb, kebāb. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is number XXIII in Ahmet Kartal's edition. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal moves forward with a comparison taken from a different field in each couplet: the heavens and the water-wheel, mosque and mihrab, dreams, astronomy, wine and finally the kitchen. In the opening couplet the word "çarḫ" forms a double entendre (tevriye). Çarh is both the wheel of heaven and the water-wheel that lifts water in buckets as it turns. The heaven that fills the lover's eye with tears is cursed, "may you fall to ruin turning and turning"; the water-wheel filling with water as it turns and the heaven filling the eye with tears as it turns meet in one image.

In the second couplet love is told in the language of worship. The head of the beloved's street is the lover's mosque, her footprint his mihrab; rubbing his face on that print, the lover seems to prostrate himself. In the third couplet there is a delicate helplessness: the only way to see the beloved is in a dream, but sleep does not enter the lover's eyes. So the dream too becomes a closed door.

The fourth couplet is the most striking conceit of the ghazal. The astrolabe is a round instrument with which astronomers measured the altitude of the sun and stars. The beloved's face is high like the sun; the lover's eye has become a round astrolabe to measure this height. "İrtifā‘", altitude, is used both as a term of astronomy and for the beloved's unreachable loftiness. In the fifth couplet the lip is likened to wine and called "müferriḥ", cheering; in old medicine the word was also used for remedies that gave relief to the heart.

The closing couplet carries the ghazal into the kitchen. The eyelashes are skewers, and the lover's liver, cut into pieces, is kebab. The word "ḳandan" can be read both as "whence" and as "from blood", and fits the image of the bloody liver. Kartal draws attention to two ghazals among Basîrî's Turkish poems that include the names of dishes of the period; the skewer and kebab of this couplet may also be counted an example of the images the poet took from everyday life.

Bibliography

Online sources