Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün

Ümmīd-i vaṣl ile geçeli rūzgārumuz
Ḥadden geçüp durur ṣanemā intiẓārumuz
Bād-ı hevāya şöyle ki virdi ḳara ṣaçuñ
Ṣan kim vücūda gelmedi ṣabr u ḳarārumuz
Āḫir bu seng-ḫāre göñül k’öldüre bizi
Tā ḥaşr olunca iñleye seng-i mezārumuz
Vuṣlat demine cān niçün virmedüñ göñül
Fevt oldı furṣat eldeyiken iḫtiyārumuz
Sen meh-liḳāyı görmedi bir haftadur Münīr
Eflāke irse bes ne ‘aceb āh u zārumuz

In English

1. O idol of beauty, ever since our days have passed in the hope of union, our waiting has gone beyond all bounds.

2. Your black hair gave (our patience) to such a wind (heva) that it is as if our patience and peace had never come into being. ("Bād-ı hevāya virmek", to give to the wind, means to waste; "hevā" means both air and whim, desire. The hair scattered in the wind describes the scattering of patience.)

3. In the end this heart hard as rock will kill us, so that our gravestone will moan until the Day of Gathering. (The beloved's stone heart gives such pain that it will make even the gravestone moan.)

4. O heart, why did you not give up your soul at the moment of union? The chance was lost while the choice was in our hands.

5. Münîr has not seen you, the moon-faced one, for a week; is it any wonder if our sighs and laments reach the heavens?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a five-couplet Turkish ghazal (gazel) and is the hundred and twenty-seventh of the Turkish ghazals in the edition (tg 127). The metre is "mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün". Ersoy's list of refrains gives this ghazal the refrain (redif) "ImUz"; this is "-umuz", the possessive suffix of the first person plural ("our"). The rhyme is the "-ār" sound before it: rūzgār, intiẓār, ḳarār, mezār, iḫtiyār and zār. The ghazal is found in all three manuscripts of the divan (VT 128a, VY 106b, Ü 37b); the apparatus records no variant readings. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The refrain of the ghazal is the possessive suffix "-umuz" (our), and each couplet names something belonging to the lover: our time, our waiting, our patience, our gravestone, our free choice and our sighs. The ghazal thus gives an inventory of what the lover possesses; nearly all these possessions have to do with loss, waiting or pain. This observation on the structure is our own.

The opening couplet (matla) describes a long wait. "Rūzgār" here means time, the course of life; in the second couplet the image of wind and air takes concrete form in "bād-ı hevā". "Bād-ı hevāya virmek" (to give to the wind) means to waste something. The beloved's black hair is scattered in the wind; the lover's patience too is scattered along with the hair, as if it had never existed. The fact that "hevā" means both air and whim gives the couplet a double entendre (tevriye).

The third couplet uses the image of stone in two directions. The beloved's heart is "seng-ḫāre", hard rock; it is this that will kill the lover. After the lover's death, however, his gravestone will moan. Between "seng-ḫāre" and "seng-i mezār" (gravestone) there is a congruence and a contrast resting on the repetition of the word for stone: the hard stone kills, the gravestone moans. This correspondence is our own observation.

The fourth couplet is a regret. The lover did not give up his soul at the moment of union and missed the chance. In divan poetry the lover's sacrifice of his soul for the beloved is the highest wish; here he reproaches himself because this sacrifice was not made. The contrast between "fevt olmak" (to be lost, to slip away) and "eldeyiken" (while it was in our hands) strengthens the regret.

In the pen-name couplet the phrase "bir haftadur" (for a week) is notable. In ghazals separation from the beloved is usually described without a set term; here a concrete period is given. We do not know whether this detail rests on a real event; the sources have no information about this ghazal. That a week's separation should raise the sighs to the heavens heightens the force of the exaggeration.

Bibliography

Online sources