Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilâtün Fâ‘ilün

Mâh mı görmüş meger kim böyle olmuş zâr subh
Hûrşîdin çıkmış yere kim kılmış andan âr subh
Târ-mâr eyler evin hûrşîdin ol meh bir nefes
Çıksa ger bî-perde izhâr eylese ruhsâr subh
Veh ne hoş demdir o dem ol mehveşin bezminde ben
Mest düşem tâ şeb çeküp peymâne-i ser-şâr subh
Öyle bir medhûş olam variyetimden bî-haber
Bilmeyem şeb kendimi hem olmayam huş-yâr subh
N’ola bir fırsat bulaydım dâg-ender-dâgımı
Şerh edeydim mâhıma şeb derdimi izhâr subh
Uymazam zîrâ gice gündüz beraberdir bana
Ey müezzin eylesen gãfilleri bîdâr subh
Şâm-ı firkat zahmeti meydâna gelmez lutf idüp
‘Arz-ı ‘ârız eylese gün tek eger dil-dâr subh
Başka bir devletdir ol kim cân virem hande-leb
Gün gibi dil-dâr izhâr eyleye ruhsâr subh
Şâm ey Mîr Nigârî ol kadar âh eyledim
Hamdü li'llâh perde-i dîdârı atdı yâr subh

In English

1. Has the morning perhaps seen the moon (the moon-faced beloved), that it has grown so mournful; it has come down to earth from its sun and felt shame for it. (The sense of the couplet is uncertain.)

2. If that moon-faced one came out unveiled for a single breath and showed her cheek, she would lay waste the house of the morning's sun.

3. Ah, how pleasant is the moment when, in the gathering of that moon-faced one, drawing brimming goblets, I fall drunk from night until morning.

4. Let me be so senseless, so unaware of my own being, that at night I do not know myself and in the morning I am not sober.

5. Would that I had found a chance to tell my moon at night of my wound upon wound, and in the morning to lay bare my pain.

6. I do not sleep, for night and day are the same to me; O muezzin, it is enough that you wake the heedless in the morning.

7. If the beloved kindly showed her cheek like the sun in the morning, the trouble of the evening of separation would never arise.

8. O laughing-lipped one, it is another good fortune to give up my soul when the beloved shows her cheek like the sun in the morning.

9. O Mîr Nigârî, I sighed so much in the evening that, praise be to God, the beloved cast off the veil of her face in the morning.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The muezzin of the sixth couplet is the liveliest scene in this ghazal. The lover does not sleep, for night and day are one to him; he is not someone the morning call to prayer needs to wake. So the poet tells the muezzin to keep the work of waking for the heedless. In divan poetry the voice calling to the dawn prayer often announces the end of the lover's sleepless night; Nigârî pushes that voice away from himself, since his night has not ended in any case.

The ghazal shares its refrain, metre and rhyme with "Olmasaydı mihr bir mâh ile elbet zâr subh", which stands just before it in the divan, and can be read as its companion. There the morning was a lover smitten with the moon; here too the first couplet says the morning has seen the moon and moaned. This time, however, the morning's sun is defeated by the beloved's cheek: were that beauty to come out unveiled, she would lay waste the sun's house. The edition offers nothing on the second line of the first couplet; what the words yield is that the sun is put to shame before the beloved.

The third and fourth couplets are a wish for drunkenness. The lover wants to drink in the beloved's gathering from night until morning, not to know himself at night and not to sober up at dawn. This is the reverse of the sobering morning described in the earlier morning ghazals. In the fifth couplet night and morning are given two separate tasks: at night to tell the moon-faced one of his wounds, in the morning to lay bare his pain. "Dâg-ender-dâg", wound within wound, is the piling up of the brands the lover burns into his breast.

The last three couplets turn on the lifting of the veil. If the beloved showed her face like the sun in the morning there would be no evening of separation; then even giving up the soul would be good fortune. At the end of the ghazal the wish comes true: the poet has sighed so much in the evening that the beloved has cast off the veil in the morning.

Bibliography

Online sources