Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün

Zikr-i leb-i la‘linle bir özge mezâkım var
Kand-i mükerrerdir her dem kıluram tekrâr
Müştâk-ı cemâlindir bir zerre n’ola kılsan
Hûrşîd-i ‘izâr[ın]dan Mûsâ-yı dile izhâr
Ol demlere kurbânam kim sâkî gezer elde
Peymâne okur mutrib mestâne döner mey-hâr
Alışmış ayağımdan başımda yanar âteş
Ey sâkî benem yanmış peymâne gerek ser-şâr
Şehd-âbe-i la‘linle cem‘ it mey-i sahbâyı
Nûş eyleyelim şîrîn ser-mest okuyam eş‘âr
Peymânemi ey vâ‘iz kırma kırılırsın kim
Âzürde beni kılsa elbette çeker âzâr
Nağme-i ferah-rîzin ehl-i dili şâd eyler
Ey Mîr Nigârî ey hânende-i hoş-güftâr

In English

1. In recalling your ruby lip I have a taste apart; it is twice-refined sugar (kand-i mükerrer), I repeat it every moment.

2. The Moses of the heart longs for your beauty; what if you showed him a single mote from the sun of your cheek?

3. I would give my life for those moments when the cupbearer goes about cup in hand, the minstrel sings of the cup and the wine-drinker turns in drunken circles.

4. The fire that caught at my foot burns at my head; O cupbearer, it is I who am burned, a brimming cup is needed.

5. Mix the red wine with the honey syrup of your ruby lip; let us drink it sweetly, and drunk I will recite poems.

6. O preacher, do not break my cup, or you will be broken; for whoever wounds me will surely suffer hurt himself.

7. O Mîr Nigârî, O sweet-voiced singer, your joy-scattering melody gladdens the people of the heart.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The joke of the opening couplet rests on a word in the name of a sugar. "Kand-i mükerrer" is sugar boiled and refined twice, the purest kind; "mükerrer" also means repeated. Saying that recalling the beloved's lip is sweet as this sugar, the poet also uses the word in its second sense alongside the "tekrâr", repetition, at the end of the line: the lip is twice-refined sugar and something recalled again every moment. The self-repeating build of the metre, "Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlün" twice over, suits this recurrence.

The second couplet rests on Moses asking to see God on Mount Sinai. In the Qur'anic account, when the Lord manifested Himself to the mountain it crumbled to dust and Moses fell in a swoon. In Sufi poetry the scene is the example of divine beauty exceeding what a human being can bear. Nigârî turns his heart into a Moses and asks the beloved to show only one mote from the sun of her cheek; behind the word "mote" lies the knowledge that the whole sun could not be endured.

The word "ayak" in the fourth couplet can be read two ways. In Old Turkish and in Azerbaijani "ayak" also means a cup. Fire catching at the foot and rising to the head is the body burning from below; it also describes wine going from the cup to the head. The lover is wholly burned, and what will put the fire out is not water but a brimming cup.

The sixth couplet is among the shortest warnings to the preacher in divan poetry: break my cup and you will be broken yourself. Breaking and being broken pass meaning back and forth between the glass cup and the heart. The poet calls himself a "hânende", a singer, in the signature couplet; in the scene of the gathering set up with the minstrel of the third couplet, the last word belongs to his melody.

Bibliography

Online sources