Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilâtün Fe‘ilün

Âh u âlâm yeridir bu cihân kayguludur
İ‘tibâr itme ki ol hâne iki kapuludur
Bağrımız kan-ıla gözyaşıla dil âhiş ile
Bâğımız meyvelidir yahşı havâlı suludur
Mûr u mûş oynağıdır zâviyen ey zâhid-i şehr
Biz cünûnız yerimiz âhûludur yâ Hûludur
Sâye-i lutf-ı cihânsûz yerimdir ne elem
Ki hücûm eylese gam çünki penâhım olur
Yokdur erbâb-ı vera‘ ger ne elem şâm u seher
Boş degül mey-kedemiz mugbeçelerle doludur
Mesken-i âhû-yı dildir didiler tâ ki didim
Ne semen-sâdı bu sahrâ ne güzel kokuludur
‘Arsa-i ‘aşk dükenmez ana gãyet ne didim
Nice tahmîn ideyim bu ânîdir bu toludur
İrişür ‘âlem-i tecrîde Mesîhâya yiter
Her kimün hâk-i pey-i mihr-i Muhammed yoludur
Bana ‘arz eyleme Yûsuf sözin ey râvî ki men
Kurbânam ol kese kim Mîr Nigârî kuludur

In English

1. This world is a place of sighs and pains, it is full of care; do not trust it, for that house has two doors (one entered by birth, the other left by death).

2. With our bleeding breast, our tears and the sighing of the heart, our garden is full of fruit, its air is fine and its water plentiful.

3. O ascetic of the town, your cell is a playground for ants and mice; we are madmen, our place is full of gazelles, full of the cry "Yâ Hû".

4. My place is the shade of a world-burning grace, so what pain can there be; for if grief should attack, that shade becomes my refuge.

5. If the men of piety are absent, what of it, morning and evening; our tavern is not empty, it is full of tavern boys.

6. They said, "This is the dwelling of the gazelle of the heart," and so I said, "How jasmine-like this desert is, how sweet its scent."

7. The field of love never comes to an end; I asked, "What is its limit?" How could I estimate it, saying this is its breadth and this its length?

8. Whoever has for his road the dust under the feet of the love of Muhammad reaches the world of detachment and attains to the Messiah.

9. O teller of tales, do not offer me the story of Joseph; I am a sacrifice to the one whose servant is Mîr Nigârî. (The line also allows "to the one who is Mîr Nigârî's servant".)

Literary and Historical Commentary

A single word, divided in two ways, carries the third couplet. "Âhûludur" means full of gazelles; the same sounds split as "yâ Hûludur" give a place full of the cry "Yâ Hû" that rises in the circles of dhikr. The poet uses both meanings against the town ascetic: the ascetic's corner is a lonely cell where ants and mice wander, while the madmen's place is both the desert of the gazelles and a gathering never without the sound of Hû. Majnun's friendship with the gazelles of the desert is well known, and the poet, saying "we are madmen", ties his own company to those desert lunatics.

The opening couplet uses an old comparison to make the world a caravanserai with two doors. The second turns those same pains into the gifts of a garden: the bleeding breast is fruit, the heart's sigh is air, the tears are water. While lamenting the cares of the world, the lover farms his own wound like an orchard. This reversal continues through the ghazal. The fifth counts the absence of the pious as no loss, since the tavern is not empty and the tavern boys are there. In the sixth, once the desert is said to be the home of the heart's gazelle, it begins to smell like a jasmine garden.

The phrase "ânîdir bu tûludur" of the seventh couplet, built from words for breadth and length, conveys that the field of love cannot be measured; whoever asks for its boundary is given no figure. The eighth couplet is the poem's only one in praise of the Prophet. The belief that Jesus was raised to heaven wholly stripped of the world serves in Sufism as the model of "tecrîd", freedom from the bonds of property. The poet finds the road to that station in the dust beneath the feet of the love of Muhammad.

Where every other couplet ends on the sound "-ludur", the fourth reads "penâhım olur" in the edition. Whether this comes from a manuscript or is a liberty taken by the poet is not known. The closing couplet leans on Joseph, the beauty sold as a slave: if the storyteller sets out to describe Joseph's beauty, the poet will not listen, for he has given himself to the beloved whose slave Mîr Nigârî is. The word order also permits the reading "the one who is Mîr Nigârî's servant", in which case the poet says he has given his heart to one who serves at his own door.

Bibliography

Online sources