Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilātün fe‘ilün

Mihr-i mehden izi tozına ki dil öñdin irer
N’eylesün her kişi kendü çöregine kül eşer
Ḳalmayup ṭāḳat-ı dil terk-i diyār eyledigüm
‘Āşıḳ-ı ḫaste-dile ṣabr gerek ya ḫo sefer
Maraż-ı ‘ışḳa devā benden umar ḫaste göñül
Gör ne dīvāne durur kim öliden göñlek umar
Ser-i zülfüñde göñül öldise disen ne baña
Yirde yatmaz bilinür tīzde ḫod ḳara ḫaber
Sūz-ı dilden ne ‘aceb yansa ser-ā-ser bedenüm
Şimdi m’oldı ḳuru yanında niçe yaş da yanar
‘Arż-ı ḥāl itmege dil ġamzeñe kimseyi n’ider
Öksüz oġlan ḫo mes̱eldür göbegin kendü keser
Aġlamaz kendü düşen didüm idi didi Münīr
Nicesi aġlamaz aġlar daḫı gözi de çıḳar

In English

1. The heart, out of love for the moon-faced one (mihr: love, sun), reaches the dust of her footprints before (anyone else); what can it do, everyone heaps ashes on his own bun (looks to his own affair). The couplet can be read in two ways: the phrase "mihr-i meh" can also be understood as "the sun of the moon".

2. When the heart had no strength left, I left my homeland; the sick-hearted lover needs either patience or a journey.

3. The sick heart hopes from me for a cure to the sickness of love; see how mad it is, hoping for a shirt from the dead.

4. If the heart has died at the tip of your lock, why tell me? Black news does not lie on the ground; it is soon known.

5. What wonder if my whole body burns from the burning of my heart? Is it only now? Beside the dry, many a wet thing burns too (yaş: both wet and tear).

6. What use is anyone to the heart for laying its state before your glance? "The orphan boy cuts his own navel cord" is a well-known saying.

7. I had said "one who falls by his own doing does not weep"; Münîr said: How could he not weep? He weeps, and his eye even falls out.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a seven-couplet Turkish ghazal (gazel) and is the sixty-third of the Turkish ghazals in the edition (tg 63). The metre is "fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün". Ersoy's list of refrains places this ghazal among those with the refrain (redif) "-Er"; we take the capital letter to show that the "-er" and "-ar" forms of the suffix are used together, which is an inference. The rhyme words are irer, eşer, sefer, umar, ḫaber, yanar, keser and çıḳar. The poem is found in all three manuscripts of the divan (VT 112a, VY 99a, Ü 30a). One variant is recorded in the apparatus: in Ü "derlük" is written instead of "göñlek" (shirt) in the third couplet. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

This ghazal is one of the poems that shows most densely Münîrî's fondness for sayings drawn from popular speech. The TDV article states that the poet was successful in placing proverbs and idioms in poetry. Here, in almost every one of the seven couplets, the second line ends with a proverb, an idiom or a maxim in the guise of a proverb. The first line of each couplet describes a state of the lover, and the second explains that state with a saying everyone knows. This structure is the figure of irsal-i mesel (the use of a proverb) spread over an entire ghazal.

The saying in the sixth couplet, "the orphan boy cuts his own navel cord", is named in the poet's own words a "mes̱el" (well-known saying); it tells that one who has no one must do his own work. The heart, too, cannot rely on anyone to lay its state before the beloved; it must do this itself. Between the "black news" of the fourth couplet and the beloved's black lock there is a congruence of colour; the heart's death at the tip of the lock is black news, and black news is soon heard.

In the fifth couplet the saying "beside the dry, the wet burns too" opens the way to a double entendre (tevriye). "Yaş" means, in its dictionary sense, both "wet, fresh" and "tear". The heart is burning like dry wood; beside it the lover's tears, that is, the wet, burn too. This interpretation is our own observation. The saying "to hope for a shirt from the dead" in the third couplet tells of the empty hope of a heart that expects a cure from a lover who is himself about to die.

The opening couplet (matla) can be read in two ways. In the phrase "mihr-i meh", "mihr" means both "love" and "sun"; out of love for the moon-faced beloved the heart reaches the dust of her footprints before anyone else. The saying "everyone heaps ashes on his own bun" seems here to say that everyone looks after his own interest; this sense is an inference based on the dictionary meaning and the context.

The pen-name couplet is a dialogue. The lover recalls the saying "one who falls by his own doing does not weep"; Münîr turns this saying around: the one who falls by his own doing does not merely weep, his eye even falls out. The link between "losing an eye" and "weeping" is made through the tie between tears and the eye. The last word of the ghazal is spoken by a proverb that has been contradicted.

Bibliography

Online sources