Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Ey bülbül-i şūrīde-sünūḥum aġla
Açmaz gül-i gülzār-ı fütūḥum aġla
Bu muʿbir-i ʿibretde hemān ṣaç ʿiberāt
Yār ol dil-i mecrūḥuma rūḥum aġla
In English
1. O my nightingale of frenzied inspiration, weep; the rose of the garden of my victory does not open, weep.
2. At this crossing of admonition scatter tears at once; be a friend to my wounded heart, O my soul, weep.
Literary and Historical Commentary
This quatrain, each of whose four lines ends with "ağla", weep, carries the voice of a personal mourning. The poet first addresses the nightingale; the nightingale here is the poet's source of inspiration, a bird "şûrîde-sünûh", of frenzied inspiration. Then he passes to the rose garden: "gül-i gülzâr-ı fütûh", the rose of the garden of victory or opening, does not bloom. The word "fütûh" carries both the sense of victory and, in Sufism, of the spiritual openings that come to the heart; the failure of the awaited opening is the quatrain's pain.
The second couplet names the world a "mu'bir-i ibret", a crossing of admonition. The word read "ʿiberât" in the thesis seems to point to a play on words in which the same spelling could mean both admonitions and tears; at this crossing of admonition tears must be scattered. In the last line the poet addresses his own soul and asks it to be a friend to his wounded heart. These addresses, reaching from the nightingale to the soul, become the poet's calling on his own inner voices in his solitude.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 101 (poem no. 91; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
