Original Persian Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Dil ki der zülf-i siyāheş güm-rehest
Key tevān reh burden ān-cā güm-rehest
Der-zeneḫdāneş dilem dānī ki çīst
Hemçü Yūsuf ū fütāde der-çehest
Ruḫ ki ber-dīvār-ı yārem mī-nehem
To hemān gūyī ki der-vey yek kehest
Key be-pā-būs-ı sehī servī resem
Dest mānend-i çenārem kūtehest
Dil-berī dārem ki tāb-ı mihr ez-ūst
Rūy-ı ḫūbeş-rā ne-dīdem yek mehest
Baḫşedeş her rūz Ḥaḳ z’īn gūne esb
Çün Münīr ān-kes ki meddāḥ-ı şehest

In English

1. The heart has lost its way in his black locks; how could one make one's way there, where the road is lost? ("Güm-reh", "one who has lost his way", is repeated at the end of both lines. The phrase in the second line can also be divided as "güm reh", "the road is lost"; Ersoy understands the line as "how can someone who has lost his way there make any progress?")

2. Do you know what state my heart is in, in the dimple of his chin? Like Joseph, it has fallen into a well. ("Zenahdan" is the dimple of the chin, which divan poetry likens to a well. There is an allusion to Joseph being thrown into a well by his brothers.)

3. I lay my cheek against my beloved's wall; and you say there is a straw on it. ("Keh" means straw, a wisp of straw. The couplet can be read as the lover's sallow face appearing on the beloved's wall as worthless and as yellow as a wisp of straw.)

4. When shall I reach that perfectly straight cypress, that is, the beloved, to kiss his feet? My hand is short, like the plane tree's. (In divan poetry the leaf of the plane tree is likened to an open hand. However tall the plane tree may be, its hand cannot reach the cypress; the idiom "his hand is short" also expresses being unable to manage something.)

5. I have a beloved from whom the sun takes its brilliance; I have never seen a moon like his fair face. (Ersoy also understands the second line as "I have never seen a moon as beautiful as his face".)

6. To one who, like Münîr, is the king's panegyrist, God grants every day horses of this kind. (What is meant by "z’īn gūne esb", horses of this kind, is not clear; Ersoy renders the couplet as "grants horses of every sort".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a six-couplet ghazal (gazel) written in Persian; in the edition it is the seventeenth of the Persian ghazals (fg 17). The metre is "fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün"; since the lines consist of three feet, the ghazal has a short and quick rhythm. In Ersoy's list of refrains the ghazal appears among those with the refrain (redif) "est". The rhyme is the sound "-eh": güm-reh, çeh, keh, kūteh, meh, şeh. The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 65b) and Vienna (VY 49a) manuscripts. To whom and when it was written is not known; the king mentioned in the last couplet is not named.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The first two couplets of the ghazal describe the heart's losing itself in the beloved's beauty through two familiar conventional images. In the first couplet the black lock is a dark place in which the road is lost; the repetition of the same rhyme word in both lines strengthens this sense of being lost. In the second couplet the dimple of the chin becomes a well, and the heart is likened to Joseph thrown into the well. The lock and the chin dimple are shown one after the other as two places on the beloved's face where the heart falls and remains.

The third and fourth couplets express the lover's worthlessness and powerlessness through concrete objects. The cheek laid against the beloved's wall is counted as a wisp of straw; a likeness may have been drawn between the lover's sallow face and the yellowness of straw. In the fourth couplet the cypress and the plane tree are set against each other. The beloved is a perfectly straight cypress, the lover a plane tree with open arms; yet however far the plane tree's hand-shaped leaves reach, they cannot reach the cypress's feet. The joining of the idiom "to have a short hand" with the image of the tree is the wit of the couplet. The rhyme words of the ghazal are short Persian words: çeh means well, keh straw, meh moon and şeh king. These words, very close to one another in sound, give the ghazal a quick flow when combined with the short metre. The succession of concrete objects such as the well, the straw, the cypress, the plane tree and the moon also turns the poem into a series of pictures.

The fifth couplet compares the beloved's face with the sun and the moon; even the sun's brilliance is taken from him. In the pen-name couplet (mahlas), however, the ghazal suddenly shifts into the language of praise. Münîr speaks of himself as the king's panegyrist and says that God grants such a person horses every day. What the words "horses of this kind" point to cannot be understood from the text; Ersoy too is content to render them as "horses of every sort".

Bibliography

Online sources