Original Persian Text

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

Yā Rab çi gūyem ez-dem-i hicret ki āh ez-ū
Şod ḥālet-i dilem hemegī der-tebāh ez-ū
Dil-rā be-siḥr-i ġamze-i cādūyet er be-küşt
Yek tīr-i ġamze bes buvedeş ‘öẕr-ḫᵛāh ez-ū
Ān ġonca-leb ki merdümek-i dīde-i menest
Cānem be-leb resīd ü ne-şod yek nigāh ez-ū
Çeşmem be-reh-güẕār-ı seg-i kūy-ı to be-mānd
Āyā buved ki mī-resedeş gerd-i rāh ez-ū
Meh-ṭal‘atī ki geşt hevā-dār-ı vey Münīr
Ser-geşte şod be-evc-i felek mihr ü māh ez-ū

In English

1. O Lord, what can I say of the time of separation; I can only sigh "ah" because of it. The state of my heart has been utterly ruined by it.

2. If you have killed the heart with the sorcery of your bewitching sidelong glance, one more arrow of a glance is enough to make amends for it. (Ersoy understands this to mean that one more sidelong glance is enough as blood money for the slain heart.)

3. Because of that rosebud-lipped one, who is the pupil of my eye, my soul has come to my lips, yet not a single glance has come from him.

4. My eye has been left waiting on the road where the dog of your quarter passes; will the dust of your path ever reach it from there?

5. The moon-faced one for whom Münîr has conceived a longing is such a beauty that, because of him, at the summit of the heavens the sun and moon have grown dizzy and bewildered.

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 thirty-third of the Persian ghazals (fg 133). The metre is "mef‘ûlü fâ‘ilâtü mefâ‘îlü fâ‘ilün". The refrain (redif) is the phrase "ez-ū" (from him/it), and it is given thus in Ersoy's list of refrains. The rhyme is the sound "-āh": āh, tebāh, ‘öẕr-ḫᵛāh, nigāh, rāh, māh. 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 93b) and Vienna (VY 74b) manuscripts. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Ersoy counts this ghazal among the seventeen Persian ghazals that are nazires (response poems) to Hâfız of Shiraz, and gives its counterpart as page 193 of the Istanbul 1290 (1873-74) printing of Hâfız's Divan; the TDV article also records that seventeen Persian ghazals are nazires to Hâfız. Ersoy does not quote the opening couplet of the Hâfız ghazal he means. The Hâfız ghazal in the same metre, rhyme and refrain opens with the couplet "Ḫaṭṭ-ı ‘iẕār-ı yār ki be-girift māh ez-ū / Ḫoş ḥalḳa’īst lîk be-der nīst rāh ez-ū" (The down on the beloved's cheek that has encircled and captured the moon is a lovely ring, but there is no way out of it); the identification is our own observation. Of Münîrî's rhyme words, "āh", "rāh" and "māh" also occur as rhymes in Hâfız's ghazal.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The ghazal opens with the helplessness of separation. The lover finds no words to describe the time of parting; all he can do is sigh; the word "āh", standing at the end of the line both as a groan and as the rhyme, makes this helplessness heard in sound as well. Ersoy's meaning begins "O beloved"; the text, however, has "Yā Rab" (O Lord), and our rendering follows the text.

The second couplet likens the glance to a sorcerer. The glance that killed the heart by sorcery shoots a new arrow by way of apology; the beloved's "apology", in other words, is a fresh wound. Ersoy explains this apology as blood money. In the third couplet the word "leb" (lip) is used twice, in two different senses: the beloved is "ġonca-leb", rosebud-lipped, while the lover's soul has "be-leb resīd", come to his lips. "For the soul to come to the lips", in its dictionary sense, means to be on the point of death. The beloved is the pupil of the lover's eye, yet that eye cannot win a single glance from him; this link between eye and glance gives the couplet a bitter contrast.

In the fourth couplet the lover's eye waits on the road where the dog of the quarter passes. In divan poetry the dust of the beloved's path counts as kohl for the eye; the lover's hope is that this dust may reach his eye, even if only on the dog's feet. In the pen-name couplet (mahlas) the word "ser-geşte", in its dictionary sense, means both "dizzy, bewildered" and "wandering about". The ceaseless turning of the sun and moon in the sky is ascribed to their bewilderment before the beloved's beauty; this double entendre (tevriye) and poetic aetiology (hüsn-i talil) are our own observation. The sense of sky and air in "hevā" within "hevā-dār" (longing, lover) also forms a congruence of images (tenasüp) with "evc-i felek" (the summit of the heavens).

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