Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilātün feʿilün

Sırr-ı ʿilmiñde nihān ḳalsun ilāhī künhüm
Rūz-ı maḥşerde ʿiyān olmaya ḥāl-i tebehüm
Ne ḫaber eyler iseñ eyle nihānī ḳuluña
Beni rüsvā-yı cihān itme amān pādişehüm
Yüz ḳarasıyla ḥużūra gelemem kim aġarup
Yüzüme perde çeker luṭf ile rīş-i siyehüm
Ḳalırım ḫaṭve-i ūlāda tehī-dest ü faḳīr
Sefer-i āḫirete ḫayr ise ger zād-ı rehüm
Ebediyetde bu ḥādiŝ ʿameliñ ḥükmi nedir
Raḥmet-i vāsiʿañ olmuş ezel ümmīd-gehüm
Demi geçdikçe ḥayātıñ saña müştāḳ olurum
İnḥirāf itmede aġyār yüzine nigehüm
Dil-i ḫvābīde-i Cūdīyi uyandır ṣaġ iken
Olmasun mürdeleriñ ṣubḥ-gehi müntebihüm

In English

1. My God, let my essence stay hidden in the secret of Your knowledge; let my state of (shame and) bewilderment not be revealed on the Day of Resurrection.

2. Whatever judgement You give Your servant, give it in secret; mercy, my Sovereign, do not disgrace me before the world.

3. I cannot come into Your presence with a blackened face, unless my black beard turns white and by Your grace draws a curtain over my face (the couplet is not entirely clear).

4. If good deeds are the provision for the journey to the hereafter, I shall stay at the very first step empty-handed and poor.

5. What is the judgement of this contingent deed in eternity? Your wide mercy has been my place of hope since pre-eternity.

6. As the moments of life pass I long for You the more; my gaze is turning away from the faces of others.

7. Wake Cûdî's sleeping heart while he lives; let my waking not be on the morning of the dead.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The voice of the divan's poems on old age takes on, in this münacat, the plainness of an entreaty. The first two couplets ask for concealment: let the poet's essence stay hidden in God's knowledge, let the reckoning be made in secret, let the servant not be disgraced before the world. This wish is the poetic counterpart of a known form of prayer that takes refuge in the attribute "Settâr", the One who covers His servant's faults.

In the third couplet a contrast of colour is built between the blackened face and the whitening beard: the poet says he cannot come into the presence with the load of his sins, but that the beard whitened by old age may, by grace, become a curtain over his face. The fourth and fifth couplets admit the insufficiency of the servant's deeds and tie hope not to deeds but to mercy: what can a contingent deed suffice for in eternity? The last couplet carries the most striking wish of the münacat: "Wake Cûdî's sleeping heart while he lives." The awakening is asked to come in life, not after death on the morning of resurrection. This is a plain prayer of the Sufi idea of awakening expressed in the saying "die before you die".

Bibliography

  • Zeynep Adıyahşi, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [43b-87b], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 85 (poem no. 235; manuscript fol. 69a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116831.pdf

Online sources