Original Persian Text

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

Sāḳīyā pür kon merā ger mī-dehī cām-ı müdām
Ḫod to mī-dānī ve mā’l-iḥsān illā bi’t-tamām
Her dem ez-ḫāk-i ten-i fersūdeem bād-ı ṣabā
Ber-muḳīmān-ı ser-i kūyet bered ṣad reh peyām
Ber-me-keş şemşīr-i ḫod ez-sīneem eşkem be-bīn
Hīc der-bārān birūn āred kesī tīġ ez-niyām
Ġam ne-bāşed ger be-ṣad miḥnet be-mīrem ba‘d ez-īn
Şod be-dīdār-ı tovem ḥāṣıl be-‘ālem her merām
Pīş-i şem‘-i rūy-ı to pervāne şod cān-ı Münīr
Tā ne-mī-sūzed ne-sāzed ḥālet-i ḫod-rā tamām

In English

1. O cupbearer, if you are going to give me the cup of wine, fill it to the brim; you yourself know that a kindness is a kindness only when it is complete. (The part "ve mā'l-iḥsān illā bi't-tamām" of the second line is in Arabic.)

2. Every moment the morning breeze carries a hundred messages from the dust of my worn-away body to those who dwell in your street.

3. Do not draw your sword from my breast; look at my tears: does anyone draw a sword from its sheath while it is raining?

4. From now on, no matter if I die under a hundred trials; by seeing you every wish of mine in the world has been fulfilled.

5. Before the candle of your face Münîr's soul has become a moth; until it burns it cannot complete its state, cannot reach perfection.

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 twenty-second of the Persian ghazals (fg 122). The second line of the opening couplet begins in Persian and ends with an Arabic saying. The metre is "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün". The ghazal does not appear in Ersoy's list of refrains; the rhyme is the sound "-ām": müdām, tamām, peyām, niyām, merām, tamām. The rhyme word "tamām" is used twice, in the opening and the pen-name couplets. Ersoy counts this ghazal among his examples of kafiye-i müreddefe (rhyme with a long vowel before the rhyme letter). The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 91a) and Vienna (VY 72b) manuscripts. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet supports a request at the gathering with a general maxim. The lover asks the cupbearer to fill the cup to the brim and gives his reason in an Arabic saying: a kindness is a kindness only when it is done in full. Stating the second line as a maxim is an example of irsal-i mesel (use of a proverb-like saying). The word "müdām" here, in its dictionary sense, means wine.

In the second couplet the lover has died and become dust; the morning breeze carries this dust to the beloved's street, and every mote of it becomes a message, a greeting, to those who live there. Saba in divan poetry is the wind that carries news between lover and beloved; here the news it carries is the lover's own dust.

The third couplet holds the ghazal's most striking comparison. The beloved's sword is lodged in the lover's breast, and the lover asks that it not be drawn out. The reason is given as a question: no one draws a sword from its sheath while it rains. The lover's tears are thus likened to rain, and his breast to the sword's sheath. This connection, and the thought that rain rusts a bare sword, are our own inference. With the words sword, sheath and rain, the couplet is built on both a simile and a general observation.

The fourth couplet is one of fulfilment and surrender: by seeing the beloved every wish has been granted, and from now on even dying under a hundred trials is no cause for grief. The pen-name couplet (mahlas) rests on one of the best-known motifs of divan poetry, the candle and the moth. The beloved's face is a candle, and Münîr's soul is the moth circling it. The moth completes its state only when it burns in the candle's flame; burning is shown here as the way to perfection. There is a pun (cinas) resting on the likeness of sound between "sūzed" (burns) and "sāzed" (makes, completes); this observation is our own.

Bibliography

Online sources