Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Rūz-ı maḥşerde ki ṭuram ḫāk içinden silkinüp
İsterem sen yārı yine ḥaşr-gāhı degzinüp
Yaşlu gözüm ḳanda görse kūyuñ iti izini
Ṭıfl-ı eşküm yüz sürer yüz cān ile fī’l-ḥāl inüp
Her göñül kim ḫāl-i yāra yetişür zülfin ṭutup
Ṣanki şāhīn yavrusına iner ey dil uṣlanup
Günde biñ kerre düzer ṣır şīşesini göñlümüñ
Gerçi kim dirlerdi hīc olmaz bütün şīşe ṣınup
Ṭut ki her cevrine dil yārüñ rıżā virmez Münīr
Çāresi ne n’eyleyübilür bes aña incinüp

In English

1. On the Day of Gathering, when I rise shaking myself out of the dust, I shall seek you, the beloved, going round the field of the Gathering once again.

2. Wherever my tearful eye sees the track of the dog of your quarter, my child of tears at once comes down and rubs its face there with a hundred lives.

3. O heart, every heart that seizes the beloved's tresses and reaches the mole is like a falcon that, grown tame, swoops down to its chick.

4. A thousand times a day (the beloved) breaks and mends again the glass of my heart's secret; and yet they used to say "a broken glass is never whole".

5. O Münîr, suppose the heart does not consent to every cruelty of the beloved; what remedy is there, what can it do by taking offence?

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a five-couplet Turkish ghazal (gazel) and is the fifteenth of the Turkish ghazals in the edition (tg 15). The metre is "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". All the rhyme words end with the converb suffix "-üp/-up": silkinüp, degzinüp, inüp, uṣlanup, ṣınup, incinüp. tg 15 is not cited in the list of refrains in Ersoy's introduction; the list gives the suffix refrain "-up" only for tg 21. Looking at the text, it can be seen that in this ghazal too the suffix "-üp" is the refrain (redif) and the "-n" sound before it the rhyme; this observation is our own. The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 102a) and Vienna (VY 82a) manuscripts; according to the apparatus VT reads "düzüp" instead of "düzer" in the fourth couplet. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

With its opening couplet (matla) the ghazal sets up a scene of faithfulness that reaches as far as the Day of Gathering. Even when the lover rises shaking himself out of the dust at the Resurrection, his first act will be to seek the beloved. "Ḥaşr-gāh" in its dictionary sense is the place of the Gathering, the field where people will be raised and assembled. The idea that love does not end with death is the basic thought on which the couplet rests.

In the second couplet the lover holds even the dog in the beloved's quarter sacred. In divan poetry the beloved's dog is a creature the lover both envies and honours. The tear is personified as "ṭıfl-ı eşk", the child of tears: since the eye is full of tears, this child "comes down" from the eye and rubs its face on the dog's track. The flowing of the tear is explained by its falling on the track. The repetition of the word "yüz" (face; hundred) in the phrases "yüz sürmek" and "yüz cān" forms a pun (cinas); this is our own observation.

In the third couplet the tresses are thought of as a rope, and the mole (ḫāl) as a chick at the end of the tresses. The heart that seizes the tresses and reaches the mole is likened to a trained, tamed falcon swooping down to its chick. "Uṣlanmak" in its dictionary sense means to come to one's senses, to grow calm. The comparison brings to life the heart gliding down the curls of the tresses as the descent of a bird of prey.

The fourth couplet rests on a proverb: a broken glass is never whole. The lover's heart is likened to a glass that keeps his secrets; the beloved breaks this glass a thousand times a day and mends it again. Thus the beloved's power overturns even the judgement of the proverb. In this respect the couplet is an example of the use of a proverb (irsal-i mesel). In the pen-name couplet the lover is called to surrender: even if the heart does not consent to the beloved's cruelty, it has no other remedy. Münîrî closes the ghazal with a plain question saying that taking offence will gain the lover nothing.

Bibliography

Online sources