Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Gel elim öp diyecek lûtf ile bana o melek
Dedim ey şâh-ı cihân kankı elindir öpecek

In English

1. When that angel graciously said to me "Come, kiss my hand", I said: "O king of the world, which of your hands is it that is to be kissed?" (The question can be understood in two ways; see the commentary.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

The whole couplet is a brief exchange. The beloved, showing favour, allows the lover to kiss a hand; the lover, instead of rejoicing, asks a question: "Which hand is to be kissed?" On the surface the question can be said to express respect, since in the presence of a sultan which hand is extended to be kissed is a detail of ceremony. It is this language of ceremony, too, that has the lover address the beloved as "şâh-ı cihân", king of the world.

But the question also implies something else. In divan poetry the lover's true wish is not the hand but the lip; the kissing of the hand is a consolation for the lip that is withheld. The question "which hand?" can be read as a coquettish form of objection to the thing to be kissed being a hand at all. This second sense is not written openly in the couplet; the wit of the poem lies precisely in making it felt without saying it.

Only Hüsameddin's selection has the couplet; the anthologies do not include it. The future tense in the word "diyecek" also suggests that the scene is built as a hope about to come true in a moment. In other couplets of Ehlî's too the beloved is addressed like a ruler: "şâh-ı kerem", "şeh-i hûbân", "şeh-i mülk-i melâhat". These titles taken from the language of palace and council may reflect, in the poetry of a man who spent his life as a judge and waiting for appointments, a habit of seeing beauty too within an order of rank.

Bibliography

Online sources