Original Ottoman Turkish Text
Metre: Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlün faʿ (fāʿ ) and Mefʿūlü mefāʿīlü mefāʿīlü feʿūl
Esdikce ṣabā mevcelenir sebze-i çemen
Ḥasret çeker ol behçete ḫażrā-i demen
Gūyā ki perīler gezinir ḫande-künān
İzler bıraḳır luṭf-ı temāss-ı dāmen
In English
1. As the morning breeze blows, the green of the meadow ripples; the green skirt longs for that loveliness.
2. It is as if fairies stroll about laughing, leaving traces through the grace of their skirts' touch.
Literary and Historical Commentary
The traces the wind leaves on the meadow become here a fairy-tale scene. When the morning breeze blows the grasses ripple and passing patterns form on the green surface; the poet ties these patterns to the touch of fairies' skirts. Unseen fairies are strolling about laughing, and as their skirts brush the grasses they leave traces.
We are in the same world of observation as the divan's quatrains of the morning breeze and the leaves; but here the image carries a fairy-tale air. The phrase "hazrâ-i demen", green skirt, can describe both the meadow itself and the fairies' garment; the longing in the second line of the first couplet can be read as the meadow longing for this loveliness or as skirt and meadow longing for each other. This view, which tells the events of nature through the movements of unseen beings, is also close to the fairy-tale language of the divan's poems for children.
Bibliography
- Havva Tok Yıldız, Merzifonlu İbrâhîm Cûdî Dîvânı (İnceleme-Metin-Sözlük) [1b-43a], Master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, Samsun 2017, p. 122 (poem no. 163; manuscript fol. 41a). http://libra.omu.edu.tr/tezler/116853.pdf
Online sources
