Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Kıl hâkimi öldükte i çeşm-i ter âb-âmîz
Tâ olmaya ol servi de dâmân türâb-âmîz

In English

1. O tearful eye, when I die, mix my dust with water, that is, wet it with your tears, so that the skirt of that cypress-statured beloved may not be soiled with dust.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the opening couplet (matla) of a ghazal. The redif (refrain word) is "âmîz" (mixed, soiled), and the rhyme is the sound "-âb" in the words "âb" and "türâb". Gelibolulu Âlî gives the couplet in the Künhü'l-Ahbâr as an example of Edâyî's poetry; Hüsameddin quotes it from Âlî. The text that TEİS also quotes from Âlî reads "Kıl hâkümi öldükde ey çeşm türâb-âmîz / Tâ olmaya ol servin dâmânı türâb-âmiz". In this reading both lines end with "türâb-âmîz", so the rhyme is lost and the sense is weakened; Hüsameddin's reading "âb-âmîz" suits both the rhyme and the sense better. Hüsameddin's text has been followed here. The sources do not indicate the metre.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet describes the lover caring for the beloved even while contemplating his own death. "Hâk" and "türâb" mean earth, dust, "âb" water, and "çeşm-i ter" the tearful eye. The poet addresses his eye: he asks it to wet the earth of his grave with tears when he dies. The reason lies in the second line. In divan poetry the "servi" (cypress) is the beloved's tall, straight stature; should the beloved one day come to visit the lover's grave, the dust of the dry earth must not soil the hem of the robe. Wet earth raises no dust.

The subtlety of the couplet lies in the lover thinking of a service even after death: here the tear, besides being a sign of mourning, is also the means of a kindness done to the beloved. The words for earth and water stand opposite each other in the two lines and form a congruence of images (tenasüp); the similarity in sound between "âb-âmîz" and "türâb-âmîz" reinforces this correspondence. This analysis is our own.

Historical Context

Âlî gives this couplet and the opening couplet of the kaside presented to the prince as examples in his entry, which regards Edâyî as "a man of feeling unaware of the essence of poetry, who remained merely in the path of recitation". Hüsameddin objects to this judgement and writes that even these two couplets that Âlî quotes from Edâyî's poems loudly testify that he was truly a poet, a man of letters capable of finding new meanings, delicate of feeling and wide of imagination. For the poet's life and this dispute between Âlî and Hüsameddin see Edâyî Receb Bey.

Bibliography

Online sources