Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Outside the rubai metre (no metre is given in the thesis)

Mesʿūd olamam rāḥat-ı şaḫṣiyyemle
Eṭrāfımı da görmeliyim rehn-i refāh
Aġzımda olur ʿazb-ı fırāt ʿayn-ı ʿazāb
Bir teşneden ʿaks eylese semʿe bir āh

In English

1. I cannot be happy with my own personal comfort alone; I must see those around me too in well-being.

2. Should a sigh from one who thirsts echo in my ear, the sweet water of the Euphrates would be torment itself in my mouth.

Literary and Historical Commentary

One of the most humane sayings in the divan lies in these two couplets. The poet says he cannot be happy with his own comfort and must see those around him in well-being too. While another's hardship is there to see, personal peace has no meaning; happiness is thought of as a shared state.

A powerful image makes the thought concrete. Should a thirsty man's sigh reach the ear, even the sweet water of the Euphrates turns to torment in the mouth. The Euphrates is a name in divan poetry that recalls Hüseyin, left without water at Karbala; in the Karbala elegy at the beginning of the divan too it was said "weeping, he passed to the Euphrates". Here the same river tells the bitterness of water drunk in the face of another's thirst. The "bî-vezn-i rubâ'î" of the title, a kıta not in the rubai metre, notes that the poem is close to the rubai form but distinct from it in metre.

Bibliography

  • Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, pp. 121-122 (poem no. 160; manuscript fol. 41a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf

Online sources