Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilün

Yine ol māh ʿaceb kimlere olmuş muġber
Reng-i mehtāb yüzünden bulanıḳ şuʿle-i emr
Darılup şānesin atmış felegin çehresine
Ḥasret-i zülf-i siyāhıyla ṭarar leyli ḳamer
Zīr-i kākülde nihān nūr-ı cebīn-i ṣāfī
Māverā-yı şebe düşmüş nitekim nūr-ı seḥer
Çār beytim gül-i rengīn-i gülistān ṣanmış
Cūdiyā bülbülü gördüm ki iderdi ezber

In English

1. Again that moon, how strange, with whom is she offended? The colour of the moonlight has clouded her flame (the line is not entirely clear).

2. In anger she has thrown her comb in the face of the sky; longing for her black hair, the moon combs the night.

3. The light of her pure brow hidden beneath the forelock, just as the light of dawn has fallen behind the night.

4. He took my four couplets for the colourful rose of the rose garden; Cûdî, I saw the nightingale learning them by heart.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The last couplet of the moonlight poem announced a "zeyl", an appendix; this four-couplet ghazal is that appendix. While the poem told a night landscape directly, here the same images are carried over to a beloved: the moon is no longer a body in the sky but an offended beauty whose face is clouded. The second couplet continues the image of the "silver comb" from the poem: the beloved has thrown her comb in anger in the face of the sky, and the moon, longing for her black hair, combs the night.

The third couplet likens the brow beneath the forelock to the light of dawn that will rise after the night; so the darkness of night is matched with the hair, the light of morning with the brow. The closing couplet ends the series of poems with a playful boast: the nightingale took the poet's four couplets for the rose of the rose garden and learned them by heart. That the ghazal stays at four couplets is shown as a deliberate choice, named in the last couplet as "çâr beytim", my four couplets.

Bibliography

  • Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 92 (poem no. 243; manuscript fol. 71b). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf

Online sources