Original Persian Text

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

Her dāne-i ‘araḳ ki be-rūyet gül-āb şod
Ez-tāb-ı āteş-i ḥased-i ū gül āb şod
Ḫūn şod dilem zi-la‘l-i to ger nīst bāveret
Be’nger be-dīdeem ki çi ḥażır-cevāb şod
Ber-reh-güẕār-ı ḫayl-i ġamet merdüm-i dü çeşm
Bisyār ḫūn girīst ki ḫāne ḫarāb şod
Der-zīr-i burḳa‘-ı ser-i zülfet ruḫet ki dīd
Dil der-derūn-ı sīne revān der-niḳāb şod
Her dāne-i dürī ki zi-çeşmem çeked Münīr
Gūyā şeb-i siyāh-ı merā āftāb şod

In English

1. When every bead of sweat on your face became rosewater, the rose, from the heat of the fire of its envy of it, melted and became water. ("Gül-āb şod" means "became rosewater", "gül āb şod" means "the rose became water"; the two lines end with the same sound.)

2. Because of your ruby lip my heart has turned to blood; if you do not believe it, look at my eye, how quick to answer it has become. (The eye, by shedding bloody tears, at once bears witness that the heart has turned to blood.)

3. The two pupils of my eyes, standing on the road along which the army of your grief passed, wept so much blood that their houses were ruined. ("Merdüm" means both the pupil of the eye and a human being; from this arises the image of the houses of the people on an army's route being laid waste. The socket of the eye is also called its "house".)

4. The heart that saw your cheek beneath the veil of the tip of your tresses at once wrapped itself in a covering within the breast. (The couplet is obscure; one may think that the heart hid itself out of shame or out of wonder. Ersoy explains it as "whoever sees ... your cheek, that person's heart wraps itself in a covering within the breast". The Vatican manuscript has "hest" instead of "dīd".)

5. O Münîr, every pearl that drips from my eye has become, as it were, the sun of my black night. (The pearls are tears.)

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 forty-ninth of the Persian ghazals (fg 49). The metre is "mef‘ûlü fâ‘ilâtü mefâ‘îlü fâ‘ilün", and in the edition it shares the same metre, refrain and rhyme with the ghazal immediately before it (fg 48). The refrain (redif) is the verb "şod" (became); in Ersoy's list of refrains fg 48, 49, 54 and 69 are shown with this refrain. The rhyme is the sound "-āb": gül-āb, āb, cevāb, ḫarāb, niḳāb, āftāb. Ersoy counts this ghazal among his examples of kafiye-i müreddefe (rhyme preceded by a long vowel). The poem is found in the Vatican (VT 73a) and Vienna (VY 57a) manuscripts. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The opening couplet begins with a paronomasia (cinas) of the kind Münîrî favoured. The first line ends with the words "gül-āb şod" (became rosewater), the second with "gül āb şod" (the rose became water); spelling and sound are the same, the meaning different. The sense of the couplet also rests on this play. The beads of sweat on the beloved's face turn into rosewater; the rose envies this and melts into water with the fire of its envy. The process of distilling the rose to obtain rosewater turns, in this couplet, into the image of a rose melting from jealousy. The words sweat, rosewater, rose, fire and water form a congruence of images (tenasüp).

In the second couplet the eye speaks like a witness. To the beloved who does not believe that the heart has turned to blood, the eye answers at once with its bloody tears; the eye's being "quick to answer" is a personification (teşhis) describing the bloody tears flowing without delay. The third couplet moves to an image of war. Grief is an army, and the pupils of the eyes are on the road it passes; just as the houses of the people where an army passes are laid waste, so the houses of the pupils have been ruined by weeping blood. The double meaning of the word "merdüm", both pupil of the eye and human being, makes this image possible; the words army, road, house and ruin form a congruence of images.

In the fourth couplet there is the image of the veil: the tip of the tresses is like a veil covering the cheek, and the heart that sees the cheek beneath it also wraps itself in a covering within the breast. A correspondence is drawn between the beloved's covering and the heart's covering. In the pen-name couplet (mahlas) the tears are likened to pearls, and the pearls to a sun that lights the black night. The contrast between night and sun, black and bright, says that a light is born from within the lover's pain. The pen-name couplet of the previous ghazal also ended with the word sun; these two ghazals in the same metre and rhyme follow one another in the edition.

Bibliography

Online sources