Original Persian Text

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

Ez-dīde geh der-āb u geh ez-dil der-āteşem
Her ḥāletī ki behr-i to bāşed merā ḫoşem
Ḫᵛāhed ki bu’gsiled reg-i cān-ı men-i ża‘īf
Ez-zülf-i ser-keşet ki çonīn der-keş-ā-keşem
Teşvīş-i zülf-i pīç-i to der-ser ki mī-şeved
Ḥāşā ġam-ı zamāne ki gerded müşevveşem
Ez-her küdūret-i ġam-ı dünyā be-dil ne-mānd
Pīr-i muġān ki dād mey-i dürd-i bī-ġışem
Dūr ez-fürūġ-ı mihr-i ruḫeş veh ki ey Münīr
Müştāḳ-ı ṭal‘at-ı ruḫ-ı ān yār-ı meh-veşem

In English

1. Because of my eye I am now in water, because of my heart now in fire; every state that is for your sake is pleasant to me.

2. Your headstrong curls want to snap the life-vein of feeble me; for because of them I am caught in such a tugging. ("Keş-ā-keş", in its dictionary sense, means a pulling to and fro, a tussle.)

3. What comes into my head is the disorder of your twisted curls; God forbid that it should be the grief of the age that has distracted me.

4. The elder of the Magians gave me wine of the lees, unadulterated; no turbidity of the world's grief has remained in the heart. (Ersoy does not render "dürd" separately and understands the wine as "pure wine"; "dürd", in its dictionary sense, is the sediment left at the bottom of wine.)

5. O Münîr, alas, I am far from the light of the sun of his cheek; I long for the rising of the face of that moon-like beloved.

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 hundred and seventeenth of the Persian ghazals (fg 117). The metre is "mef‘ûlü fâ‘ilâtü mefâ‘îlü fâ‘ilün". In Ersoy's list of refrains the ghazal is given with the refrain (redif) "-em" (I am); the rhyme is the sound "-eş": āteş, ḫoş, keş-ā-keş, müşevveş, bī-ġış, meh-veş. The poem is found only in the Vatican manuscript (VT 89a). To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet is built on the contrast of water and fire. Because his eye weeps the lover is in water, because his heart burns he is in fire; the repetition "geh ... geh" (now ... now) shows the swing between the two states. The second line accepts these pains: every state endured for the beloved is pleasant to the lover. The matched order of eye and heart, water and fire, gives the couplet its balance.

The second and third couplets describe the curls, and in each, words of the same root are used side by side. In the second couplet the curl is "ser-keş", in its dictionary sense head-tossing, headstrong; and because of it the lover is in "keş-ā-keş". Both words rest on the Persian verb "keşīden", to pull; the length and twist of the curl are imagined as a cord that pulls and snaps the lover's life-vein. In the third couplet "teşvīş" (disorder) and "müşevveş" (distracted) come from the same Arabic root. This side-by-side use of cognate words is our own observation. The lover traces his distraction to the beloved's tangled curls and expressly sets the grief of the age apart from it, and so exalts the pain of love above worldly sorrow.

The fourth couplet brings in the motif of the tavern. The pîr-i mugan, the elder of the Magians, is in divan poetry the old keeper of the tavern and, in a Sufi reading, the spiritual guide. The wine he gives removes the turbidity of the world's grief from the heart. There is a contrast between "küdūret" (turbidity) and "bī-ġış" (unadulterated). Since the word "dürd" means sediment, a subtle paradox may be felt in the expression of a wine that has lees yet is unadulterated; this reading is our own inference.

The pen-name couplet (mahlas) joins images of sun and moon. The beloved's cheek is a sun, and he himself is moon-faced; "mihr" (sun), "fürūġ" (light), "ṭal‘at" (rising, face) and "meh-veş" (moon-like) form a congruence of images (tenasüp). The lover has fallen far from this light and longs only for its rising. Ersoy renders the interjection "veh" in the line as "alas", as he does in the ghazal on the refrain "tovem" earlier in the edition (fg 105).

Bibliography

Online sources