Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilātün / fe‘ilün

Gehī ‘āşıḳ gehī aġyār nigāra mülḥak
Bu mes̱eldir ki dilā gāh s.k uzar gāhī ṭ.ş.ḳ
Ḥarlayup ḳan tere batmış o sebū-yı bāde
Ḳocacıḳ meclise geldi baş açıḳ yalın ayaḳ
Getür ol ḳaḥveyi nūş eyleyelim ey sāḳī
Oḳunur ‘aksi bu mir’āt-ı göñülde hū Ḥaḳ
Ḳalḳdı bir gūşede yatdı g.te küsdi kürkle
İnfi‘āl eyleyüp oġlana o şaḫṣ-ı aḥmaḳ
Kimle hem-pister-i iḳbāl olursa olsun
Zen-i dünyāya ṭalāḳ virdi bu Vāżıḥ muṭlaḳ

In English

1. Sometimes the lover, sometimes the rival stands close to the beloved; O heart, this is a proverb: sometimes one grows long, sometimes the other (a popular saying made of two coarse words, which the edition gives in abbreviated form).

2. That wine jug, gurgling, is bathed in a sweat of blood; the little old man came to the gathering bareheaded and barefoot.

3. O cupbearer, bring that coffee and let us drink; in this mirror of the heart its reflection reads "Hû Hak".

4. That fool took offence at the boy, withdrew to a corner and lay down; in a coarse phrase, he sulked with his own fur coat and punished himself.

5. Let it share the bed of fortune with whomever it will; this Vâzıh has divorced the woman of the world once and for all.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The ghazal has five couplets and is written in the remel pattern "fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün"; according to Babaarslan this pattern is used in thirteen ghazals of the Dîvânçe. There is no redif (refrain word); the rhyme is the "-aḳ" of "mülḥaḳ, ayaḳ, Ḥaḳ, aḥmaḳ, muṭlaḳ". All these words end in the letter kaf, and this poem is the only ghazal listed under kaf in Babaarslan's count of letters. The two coarse words in the second line of the opening couplet are given in the edition as "s.k" and "ṭ.ş.ḳ", with their vowels removed; in the fourth couplet another word is shortened in the same way. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Babaarslan says that Vâzıh, like many poets of his century, at times fell into a vulgarity bordering on obscenity; this ghazal is one of the clear examples of that tendency. The poem is built like a scene from a drinking party and mixes the refined themes of divan poetry with the coarse words of everyday talk. In the first couplet the fact that sometimes the lover, sometimes the rival is close to the beloved is explained by a coarse popular saying about fortune passing from one to the other in turn. The second couplet is the liveliest invention of the ghazal: the wine jug is personified as an old man. The jug gurgles as the wine is poured, the outer face of the clay jug sweats; with its unstoppered mouth bareheaded and its footless body barefoot, it is like an old man. This interpretation is our own reading and can be seen as a playful use of personification.

In the third couplet the cupbearer is asked for coffee instead of wine, and the reflection of the coffee in the mirror of the heart is said to read "Hû Hak". "Hû" and "Hak" are divine names recited in dhikr; the joke of the gathering thus turns at once into a mystical expression. The phrase in the fourth couplet is coarse and not entirely clear; in the translation we have followed the sense of punishing oneself. The last couplet rests on an old figure that likens the world to a woman divorced from her husband: whomever the world may share the bed of fortune with, the poet has divorced it with a final repudiation. The saying about divorcing the world with three repudiations is counted among the words attributed to Ali. It is also worth noting that a poet who served as mufti ends his poem with "talak", a term of Islamic law.

Bibliography

Online sources