Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ûlü Mefâ‘îlü Mefâ‘îlü Fe‘ûlün

Cennetde olursam eger ey hûrî-kıyâfet
Billâh ki sensiz yine sönmez bu harârât
Bir cünbiş ile yakdı evim eyledi berbâd
Âyâ bu ne kãmet ne kıyâmet ne kıyâfet
Agyâr gözün remzini fehm eylemez itme
Mey-hâr degül anlamaz ol bilmez işârât
Her şey’ ki bî-mevzi‘dir ‘ayn-ı hatâdır
Zühhâda kaş oynatma degül ârif-i hikmet
Berbâd eyle variyyetini ben gibi yandır
Pervâne kıl agyârları ey gözü âfet
Düşnâm-ıla güftârını almış yine cânân
Besdir bize ey Mîr Nigârî bu şerâfet

In English

1. O you with the look of a houri, even if I were in paradise, by God, without you this fever would still not die down.

2. With a single movement she burned my house and laid it waste; what stature is this, what doomsday, what form.

3. The strangers do not understand your eye's sign, do not (give them signs); one who is not a wine-drinker does not understand, does not know signs.

4. Everything out of place is error itself; do not raise your eyebrow at the zealots, they are not knowers of wisdom.

5. O you whose eye is a calamity, lay waste their being, burn them as you burned me; make the strangers moths.

6. O Mîr Nigârî, the beloved has again mixed curses into her words; this honour is enough for us.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The second couplet contains one of the favourite wordplays of divan poetry: "Âyâ bu ne kãmet ne kıyâmet ne kıyâfet." Kâmet is stature; kıyâmet the end of the world and great tumult; kıyâfet appearance, form. The first two words come from the same Arabic root and are almost identical in sound; the beloved's stature, by her rising, raises a doomsday. Nigârî adds a third word, kıyâfet, to the pair and builds a chain of three sounds. A single movement of the beloved has been enough to burn the lover's house.

Couplets three and four turn on the language of signs. The beloved's eye gives a "remz", a sign, but the strangers do not understand it, for they are not "mey-hâr", wine-drinkers. Only the people of the same gathering can decipher the signs. The fourth couplet ties this to a principle: "Her şey’ ki bî-mevzi‘dir ‘ayn-ı hatâdır", everything out of place is error itself. Raising an eyebrow at the zealot, giving him a sign, is out of place too, for he is no knower of wisdom. The idea, common to divan poetry and Sufism, of "telling the secret only to those fit for it" is applied here to the beloved's glance.

The last couplet repeats a joy seen in another ghazal of the divan: the beloved has cursed the lover, but even a curse is her word and an honour for the lover. In the fifth couplet the beloved is asked to burn the strangers too, to turn them into moths. The rhyme is built in "kıyâfet, işârât, hikmet, âfet, şerâfet" and with "harârât" in the opening couplet; in the ghazals of this section the sounds "-ât" and "-et" are used side by side as rhymes. The six couplets are written in "mef‘ûlü mefâ‘îlü mefâ‘îlü fe‘ûlün".

Bibliography

Online sources