Original Persian Text

Metre: mefā‘īlü mefā‘īlün fe‘ūlün

Giriftār-ı ser-i zülfet şod er dil
Ḫalāṣ-ı vey zi-‘ıḳdeş būd müşkil
Be-rāhet cān-ı şīrīn z’ān nihādem
Ki mī-bāşed be-şīrīn ṭıfl māyil
Zi-āh-ı mā me-şev çün ġonca dil-teng
Gülī ne’bved ki başed bī-‘anādil
Be-devr-i ḫaṭṭ u ān zülf-i müselsel
Be-neh ber-gerdenem müşkīn ḥamāyil
Eger ne’bved viṣāl-i yār mümkin
Münīr ez-goft u gūy-ı mā çi ḥāṣıl

In English

1. If the heart has become captive to the tip of your curls, its escape from their knot has proved hard.

2. This is why I laid my sweet soul on your road: a child is fond of sweets. ("Şīrīn", in its dictionary sense, means sweet, and it is also the name of Shirin, the beloved of Ferhad.)

3. Do not let your heart grow narrow like the rosebud at our sighs; there is no rose without nightingales.

4. In the age of the down and of those curls linked like a chain, hang a musk-scented hamail around my neck. (A hamail is an amulet or strap hung around the neck or slung across the shoulder; Ersoy understands it as "musk-scented amulets".)

5. O Münîr, if union with the beloved is not possible, what comes of all our gossip.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a five-couplet ghazal (gazel) written in Persian; in the edition it is the hundredth of the Persian ghazals (fg 100). The metre is written in the edition as "mefâ‘îlü mefâ‘îlün fe‘ûlün". The ghazal has no refrain (redif) and does not appear in Ersoy's list of refrains. The rhyme is the sound "-il": dil, müşkil, māyil, ‘anādil, ḥamāyil, ḥāṣıl. The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 85b) and Vienna (VY 68a) manuscripts. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet uses the same image as the opening couplet of fg 87, which stands thirteen ghazals earlier in the edition. There too the heart was bound to the knot (‘ıḳd) at the tip of the curls and its difficulty was never untied; here too the heart has become captive to the tip of the curls, and its escape from their knot has proved "müşkil" (hard). The repetition of the same words in two ghazals shows that the knot of the curls is an image to which Münîrî often turns.

The second couplet carries the finest wordplay of the ghazal. "Cān-ı şīrīn" means sweet soul; in the second line the word "şīrīn" expresses the sweets of which a child is fond. The word is also the name of Shirin, the beloved of Ferhad, and with the image of the lover who gives his life for his beloved it recalls the story of Ferhad. The second line makes a truth known to all, a child's liking for sweets, the ground of the action in the first line; this is the figure of irsal-i mesel (supporting a claim with a proverb-like truth). The lover shows his own heart as a child running after sweets.

The third couplet is built in the same way. The beloved is asked not to be wearied by the lover's sighs, for there is no rose without nightingales; just as the rose bears the nightingale's outcry, the beloved should bear the lover's sighs. The adjective "dil-teng" (narrow-hearted, wearied) also agrees with the shape of the bud that is still closed. There is a congruence of images (tenasüp) among bud, rose and nightingales (‘anādil).

In the fourth couplet a link is felt between the chain and madness. The beloved's curls coil like a chain; in the age of these curls the lover asks that a musk-scented hamail be hung around his neck. The scent of musk is a known quality of the curls in divan poetry; the musk-scented hamail he asks to have hung on his neck may therefore also be thought of as the curls themselves. The word "müselsel" also occurs in the last couplet of the preceding ghazal (fg 99); in both ghazals it is used together with "devr". The pen-name couplet (mahlas) closes the ghazal with a plain complaint: if union is not possible, what is gained from gossip and a crowd of words. A contrast between talk and outcome is set up between "goft u gūy" (saying and telling) and "ḥāṣıl" (outcome, gain) in the rhyme.

Bibliography

Online sources