Nazîf, Koşma 1: İflaḥ olmam ben bu dertden ölürüm

Koşma 1 — İflaḥ olmam ben bu dertden ölürüm

Amasya05 Editorial Board • Editor: Mevlüt Erdem Öztürk • 01 October 2026 • Updated: 13 October 2026 • 3 min reading

The first quatrain of Nazîf's koşma in the Merzifon Cönkü: the pain of love, fear of exile and a dark-eyed beloved; original text, English prose and commentary.

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

İflaḥ olmam ben bu dertden ölürüm
Derdime bir çare bul ḳara gözlüm
Ḳorḳarım ki ġurbet elde ḳalırım
Yine görünmedi yol ḳara gözlüm

In English

1. I shall not recover from this pain, I shall die; find a remedy for my pain, my dark-eyed one. I fear that I shall remain in a foreign land; once again the road has not come into sight, my dark-eyed one.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a koşma. The koşma is the most common verse form of minstrel poetry; it is built of quatrains and usually sung in an eleven-syllable metre. The lines have a caesura after 6+5 or 4+4+3 syllables; the syllable count is ours. Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the first quatrain of this poem. The first and third lines rhyme in "ölürüm / ḳalırım", the second and fourth in "bul / yol"; "ḳara gözlüm" is the refrain. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The quatrain brings together the pain of love and the pain of exile. The first two lines are a plea to the beloved: the lover says he will not recover from this pain, he will die, and asks the "dark-eyed" beloved for a remedy. In the second half the feeling of exile dominates: the lover fears staying in a strange land and says the road home has not come into sight. "Yol görünmek" (for the road to appear) means in everyday Turkish both setting out on a journey and finding a way out; the line carries both senses at once. The plain language of the quatrain, the formulaic address "kara gözlüm" (my dark-eyed one) and the theme of exile bring it very close to folk songs.

Historical Context

The poem is recorded under the pen name "Nazîf" in the Merzifon Cönkü introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. The cönk contains ten of Nazîf's poems, one in syllabic metre and nine in aruz; the aruz poems are all ghazals, and most carry religious and moral admonition. The article gives no information about the poet; the poet's identity and the century in which he lived have not been determined. Since the cönk is thought to have been compiled in Merzifon within the literary circle of Eyüb Sabrî, the poet may have been one read or living in that circle. For details, see the page on Nazîf. The poem is on page 3 of the cönk and page 550 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.