Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Bitdi nefesim sīnede yoḳ ṭāḳat āh
Çeşmimde faḳat ḳaldı biraz nūr-ı nigāh
Ölsem de viṣālinden ümīdim kesmem
El-müʾminü lā yeyʾesü min-ravḥi’llāh
In English
1. My breath is spent, there is no strength left in my breast to sigh; only a little light of sight remains in my eye.
2. Even if I die I will not give up hope of union with you; (Arabic) the believer does not despair of God's mercy.
Literary and Historical Commentary
The opening is a deathbed scene. The breath is spent, there is no strength left even to sigh, there is only a little light of sight in the eye. Following the divan's quatrains on old age, this one ties the body's approach to its end to a supplication.
Hope is carried beyond death in the second couplet: even if he dies he will not give up hope of union. The Arabic last line echoes the Qur'anic verse "Do not despair of God's mercy; none despairs of God's mercy save the people who disbelieve" (Yûsuf 12:87); here it is shortened like a maxim. Whether the union is with the beloved or with God is not said; in a Sufi reading death is the door to union with the Beloved, "the wedding night", and the quatrain is a calm expression of this belief.
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. 109; manuscript fol. ). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
