Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün

Ḳoparduñ ḫaṭṭ u ḫālüñden belālar
Nicesi olmasunlar mübtelālar
Hemān cān ḳaldı gitdi ṣabr u ṭāḳat
Ayında ol ḳaragözler elalar
Ne yürekle dilüm varur k’idem şerḥ
Oḳından çekdigüm çoḳ çoḳ belālar
Çıḳarsa göklere āh u fiġānum
Felek ṭasına āvāze ṣalalar
Eger cevri buyısa cānıla dil
Baṣīrī ṣanma kim saña ḳalalar

In English

1. You have stirred up calamities with the down and the mole of your face; how could so many not become afflicted?

2. Only my soul is left; patience and strength are gone. With the edition's reading ("Ayında ol ḳaragözler elalar") the meaning of the second line is not clear. In Arabic script "ayında" and "anı da", "elalar" and "alalar" stand very close to each other; if the line is read "Anı da ol ḳaragözler alalar", the couplet means "let those dark eyes take that too": since patience and strength are gone, the beloved's eyes will take the soul that remains. This is a suggested reading; the edition's reading has been kept in the text.

3. With what heart can my tongue set out to tell the many, many calamities I have suffered from her arrow?

4. If my sighs and laments rose to the heavens, they would set the bowl of the firmament ringing, that is, the dome of the sky would ring like a bowl.

5. O Basîrî, if her cruelty goes on like this, do not think that soul and heart will stay with you.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal (gazel) of five couplets in the hezec family of aruz (quantitative metre), in the pattern "mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün"; the edition does not state the metre, which emerges from scansion. The redif (refrain word) is the plural ending "-lar"; the rhyme rests on the sound "-la / -ālā" before it: belālar, mübtelālar, elalar, belālar, ṣalalar, ḳalalar. The word "belālar" rhymes twice, in the opening couplet and the third. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The ghazal is number IV in Ahmet Kartal's edition. The second line of the second couplet is printed in the edition as "Ayında ol ḳaragözler elalar"; since the meaning of this reading could not be resolved, a suggested reading is given in the translation. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The key word of the ghazal is "belâ", calamity. In the first couplet the beloved's "ḫaṭṭ u ḫāl", the down and the mole of her face, are shown as the source of calamities. In divan poetry the fine down framing the face is likened to writing or to a snare, and the mole to a grain of bait in that snare; these features of beauty are what catch lovers. So the poet asks "nicesi olmasunlar mübtelālar", how could so many not be afflicted. The words "belā" and "mübtelā" come from the same root; their standing side by side in rhyme creates a bond of sound and sense close to the figure of derivation (iştikak).

In the second couplet the lover has only his soul left; patience and strength are gone. With the present reading it is not possible to understand the end of the line with certainty, but the words "dark eyes" show that the couplet turns to the beloved's eyes. With the suggested reading, the couplet says that the turn has come to the last remaining thing, the soul. The third couplet is among those Kartal mentions as giving voice to the beloved's torment and cruelty: the calamities the lover has suffered from the beloved's arrow are so many that the tongue cannot find the heart to tell them. The pairing of "heart" and "tongue" stresses the bond between courage and speech.

The fourth couplet rests on hyperbole. If the lover's sighs and laments rose to the heavens, the dome of the sky, the "felek ṭası", bowl of the firmament, would ring like a bowl. The likening of the sky to an upturned bowl is a familiar image in divan poetry; the lover's voice is strong enough to make this bowl sound. In the last couplet the poet addresses himself with a warning: if the beloved's cruelty goes on like this, neither soul nor heart will remain. So the ghazal completes the list of losses begun in the second couplet: first patience and strength, in the end soul and heart.

Bibliography

Online sources