Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Vâlih-i dîde-i mestânına bak ey sâkî
Sûziş-i hasret-i pervânene bak ey sâkî
İltifât eyle nazar-bâzını mahrûm itme
‘Âşık-ı teşne-i peymânına bak ey sâkî

In English

1. O cupbearer, look at the one bewildered by your drunken eye; look at the burning of your moth in its longing, O cupbearer.

2. Show favour, do not deprive the one who cannot stop gazing at you; look at your lover who thirsts for your goblet, O cupbearer.

Literary and Historical Commentary

All four lines end in "bak ey sâkî", look, O cupbearer, and each asks to turn the cupbearer's eye to another state. The lover names himself in three ways: the one "vâlih", amazed and bewildered, by the cupbearer's drunken eye; her moth; the lover "teşne", thirsting, for her goblet. Each name shows one face of the lover's bond with the cupbearer. Amazement comes from the eye, burning from the candle, thirst from the cup. "Dîde-i mest", the drunken eye, is in divan poetry the name for the beloved's languid, half-closed gaze; this eye, which itself looks drunk, makes drunk whoever looks at it. The whole quatrain is a plea, and in none of its lines is the cupbearer's answer heard.

"Nazar-bâz" in the third line means one who plays with glances, who cannot give up looking at beauty. The lover asks the cupbearer for a glance as well as wine; "iltifât" means to turn one's face towards someone and attend to him. The moth is one of the best-known images of divan poetry: the moth circling the candle and at last throwing itself into the flame is the lover who perishes for his beloved. Here the candle is the cupbearer herself.

After the ghazals in hâ the divan sets two cupbearer rubais, and this is the first of the pair. The words at the line ends, "mestânına, pervânene, peymânına", rhyme on the sound "-âne".

Bibliography

Online sources