Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Maḥṣūl alınup ḫidmet-i bāġım bitdi
Yapraḳ dökümi geldi ferāġım bitdi
Nuṭfe biter inṭifāya başlar bu çerāġ
Eyvāh çerāġımdaki yaġım bitdi
In English
1. The harvest is gathered, the work of my vineyard is done; the fall of the leaves has come, my time of rest is done as well.
2. The wick runs out, this lamp begins to go out; alas, the oil in my lamp is done. (The first word of the third line is read "nutfe" in the thesis.)
Literary and Historical Commentary
The refrain "bitdi", is done, ties each line to an ending, and old age is drawn through two familiar images, the vineyard and the lamp. The first couplet follows the year of a vineyard: the harvest has been gathered, the work of the vineyard is over, the fall of the leaves has come. Autumn is the last season of life; the poet also names the emptiness that follows the harvest as the end of "ferâğ", the time of rest.
The lamp comes in the second couplet. The lamp has begun to go out because its oil is spent; life burns like a lamp and goes out when the oil within it runs dry. In the thesis the word at the head of the third line is read "nutfe"; nutfe is the name of the drop that is the beginning of creation, and if this reading is accepted the line names life's beginning and end together. The context, however, suggests a word connected with the lamp, such as "wick"; so the reading is not certain. The "eyvah", alas, of the last line is a plain, heartfelt cry often heard in the divan's poems on old age.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 106 (poem no. 106; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
