Original Persian Text

Metre: mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün

Dilem-rā gerçi cān baḫşed ez-ān la‘l ü dehān būse
Ne-dānem bīm-i cān mā-rā çirā bāşed ez-ān būse
Zi-bīm-i ġamze-i şūḫet berā-yı ḫūn-behā-yı men
Dilem ez-la‘l-i to ḫᵛāhed ki be’stāned nihān būse
Zi-behr-i būs-ı rūy-ı to me-küş dil-rā be-ṣad miḥnet
Pey-i ta‘ẓīm mī-bāşed be-muṣḥaf her zamān būse
Be-pīş-i mihr-i ruḫsāret seḥer-gāhī ki mī-āyed
Zemīn-rā mī-zened evvel şeh-i gerdūn revān būse
Nişānhā-yı kef-i pāyeş be-her cāyī ki mī-bīnem
Münīrī pīşter ez-men zened eşkem ber-ān būse

In English

1. Though a kiss from that ruby lip and mouth grants life to my heart, I do not know why we suffer fear for our life because of that kiss.

2. My heart, for fear of your playful sidelong glance, wants to take a kiss secretly from your ruby lip as my blood money.

3. Do not kill with a hundred torments the heart that longs to kiss your face; the copy of the Qur'an is always kissed out of reverence.

4. At dawn, as the king of the sky (the sun) comes before your sunlike cheek, it first kisses the ground.

5. O Münîrî, wherever I see the beloved's footprints, my tears kiss those prints before I do.

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 forty-third of the Persian ghazals (fg 143). The metre is "mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün mefâ‘îlün". The refrain (redif) is the word "būse" (kiss), and it is given thus in Ersoy's list of refrains too. The rhyme is the sound "-ān": dehān, ān, nihān, zamān, revān. 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 96a) and Vienna (VY 77a) manuscripts. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Each couplet of the ghazal describes a different kiss: the kiss taken from the beloved's lip, the kiss asked as blood money, the kissing of the Qur'an, the sun kissing the ground, and the tears kissing the footprint. The word "kiss" expresses on the one hand the closeness between lover and beloved, and on the other reverence and devotion; the ghazal moves back and forth between these two meanings.

The opening couplet (matla) is built on a contrast. The kiss taken from the beloved's lip adds life to life, yet the same kiss also gives the lover fear of death. This opposition between granting life and fearing for one's life rests on seeing the beloved as a power that both gives life and kills. In the second couplet the cause of this fear is explained: the beloved's playful glance will kill the lover. The lover wants to take in advance, as a secret kiss, the blood money owed for his death. "Ḫūn-behā", in its dictionary sense, is the compensation paid to the kin of a person who has been killed.

The third couplet has the air of a proverb used as proof (irsal-i mesel). The beloved's face is likened to the mushaf, the written copy of the Qur'an; just as the mushaf is kissed out of reverence, so the face deserves to be kissed. Likening the face to the mushaf is a familiar simile in divan poetry. On the strength of this proof the lover asks the beloved not to punish the heart that longs to kiss his face.

The last two couplets describe kisses that end on the ground. At dawn, as the sun comes before the beloved's sunlike cheek, it first kisses the ground. To kiss the ground, in its dictionary sense, is to bow and show reverence in the presence of a great person. That the light of the rising sun falls first on the ground is tied to this act of reverence; this is a poetic aetiology (hüsn-i talil). In the pen-name couplet (mahlas) the tears too fall to the ground: wherever the lover sees the beloved's footprint, his tears move before him and kiss that print. The dripping of tears to the ground is read as a kiss, and the ghazal ends with the lover's humblest kiss.

Bibliography

Online sources