Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün mefā‘ilün fe‘ilün

Hicrden gözlerüm ḳara deñizüñ
‘Aynıdur līk yaşı beñzemesün

In English

1. From separation my eyes are the very image of the Black Sea; but let its tears not resemble the Black Sea. (The couplet can be read in two ways. "‘Ayn" means both eye and the very same, the exact likeness of a thing; the eyes have become a black sea from weeping. The words of the second line, "but let its tears not resemble it", must mean either that the tears far exceed the sea, or that, being bloody, they do not resemble the water of the black sea. The exact meaning is uncertain.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

Since its two lines do not rhyme, the couplet is a müfred, a single couplet standing on its own. The metre is 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 and requires one Turkish syllable in the second line to be read short. It is number LI in Ahmet Kartal's edition and stands among the single couplets and opening couplets at the end of the divan manuscript. Whether it is a fragment of a ghazal or was composed as a single couplet from the start is not known. To whom and when it was written is not known either.

In the divan manuscript these short pieces, which come after the ghazals, the kaside and the kıt'as, consist, in Kartal's ordering, of three single couplets and two opening couplets numbered LI-LV. One of them is the opening couplet addressed to Müeyyedzâde, and two are couplets on food and fruit that show Basîrî's joking side. This couplet, for its part, treats one of the best-known subjects of love poetry, the lover's tears, in a brief two-line utterance tied to a place name.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet ties the familiar hyperbole that likens the lover's tears to a sea to a particular place: the Black Sea. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) between the eyes being "kara", black, and the word "kara" in the sea's name; the black eyes weeping from separation pour out as much water as a black sea. The word "‘ayn" carries a double entendre (tevriye) here. In Arabic it means both "eye" and the thing itself, the same; it is also the name of a letter of the Arabic alphabet shaped like an eye. So "my eyes are the ‘ayn of the Black Sea" suggests both that the eyes are its exact likeness and that they are its "eye", its source. In Arabic "ayn" also means a spring of water, and this sense strengthens the congruence with the sea.

The second line brings an unexpected restriction: "līk yaşı beñzemesün", but let its tears not resemble it. What exactly these words mean is not clear. In divan poetry the lover's tears are often bloody; in that case the colour of the tears does not resemble the water of the black sea. On another reading the poet may be saying that the quantity of his tears exceeds the sea, so they should not be belittled by being compared with it. That the word "yaş" also means age, years of life, in Turkish opens the possibility of a further play, but this cannot be drawn from the text with certainty. The translation shows this uncertainty openly.

Bibliography

Online sources