Original Persian Text
او اقرب من حبل وریداست بمن
از جهل کمانم که بعیداست بمن
دانم که دلی دانم و او اندر دل
لیکن چه ازین علم پدیداست بمن
Reading in Latin letters (the reading is ours):
O aḳrebu min ḥabli'l-verîd est be-men
Ez cehl gümânem ki baʿîd est be-men
Dânem ki dilî dârem u o ender dil
Lîkin çi ezîn ʿilm pedîd est be-men
In English
1. He is nearer to me than my jugular vein; out of ignorance I suppose He is far from me.
2. I know that I have a heart and that He is in the heart; but what becomes visible to me from this knowledge?
Literary and Historical Commentary
"Aḳrebu min ḥabli'l-verîd", nearer than the jugular vein (Qâf 50:16): an Arabic phrase from the Qur'an opens the first line of this Persian quatrain. The verse saying that God is so near to man is set against the poet's own state: He who is so near is thought, out of ignorance, to be far. This contradiction between nearness and distance is the subject of the quatrain.
Knowing and seeing part ways in the second couplet. The poet knows that he has a heart and that God is in that heart; the saying attributed to the Prophet, "I did not fit into the earth or the heavens, but I fitted into the heart of My believing servant", is among the foundations of this belief. But knowing is not seeing: "what becomes visible to me from this knowledge?" The distance between the knowledge taught by kalâm and books and the contemplation sought by Sufism is laid bare by this short question. Set right beside the preceding summary of the creed, the quatrain voices the unrest of a soul not content with knowledge.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 104 (poem no. 102; manuscript fol. 36a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
