Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Kim virdi haber âyâ kim gördi bu ‘âlemde
Mi‘râc-geh-i yâri bî-rehber ü bî-himmet
Almadı serâ-perde ol gonçe-i pür perde
Göstermedi ruhsârın yakdı beni bu hasret
Peymâne-i çeşminde gördüm ki mey-i ânı
Mestânelik el virdi aldı beni bir hayret
Pâ-bûs-ı dil-ârâsı bin câna değer ammâ
Bir cânıla yok bende hayfâ ki ana tâkat

In English

2. Who, I wonder, has brought news, who in this world has seen the place of the beloved's ascension without a guide and without spiritual aid?

3. That rosebud of many veils did not lift the veil; she did not show her cheek, and this longing burned me.

4. In the cup of her eye I saw the wine of that indefinable charm (ân); drunkenness reached out its hand and wonder seized me.

5. Kissing the feet of the heart-adorning beloved is worth a thousand souls; but alas, with a single soul I have no strength for it.

Literary and Historical Commentary

This ghazal appears in the edition as an incomplete text: the couplet numbers begin at 2, and the matla, the opening couplet whose two lines rhyme, is missing. A. Azmi Bilgin says in his introduction that he prepared the divan from two printed copies, the Istanbul and Tiflis printings; whether the gap arose in the printings or during the editing is not stated. The pen-name couplet is missing too. The four couplets we have should be read as a fragment left from the middle of a poem; the text is given here with the edition's numbering.

The surviving couplets nevertheless form a whole. The second asks a question: who has reached, who has seen, the beloved's "mi‘râc-geh", the place of her ascension, without a guide and without spiritual aid? The word mi‘râc recalls the Prophet's ascension to heaven; reaching the beloved is also an ascent and needs a guide. In Sufism the guide is the spiritual master and himmet his spiritual support; the couplet states in the language of love the idea that the path cannot be travelled without a master.

Couplets three and four move between veil and eye. The beloved is a "gonça-i pür-perde", a bud of many layered petals, and does not lift the veil from her face. But in the cup of her eye the "mey-i ân", the wine of indefinable charm, can be seen; the lover drinks that wine merely by looking and falls into wonder. The last couplet says that kissing the beloved's feet is worth a thousand souls; the lover has only one soul, and even that is not enough for this kiss. With the matla lost, four rhyme words remain: himmet, hasret, hayret, tâkat, with "-et" and "-at" again side by side. The pattern is "mef‘ûlü mefâ‘îlün mef‘ûlü mefâ‘îlün".

Bibliography

Online sources