Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Virmegil ‘âşık-ı dîdâra ‘azâb ey sâkî
Yüzden al perdeni al eyle sevâb ey sâkî
Âh yandı cigerim döndi kızıl kana bugün
Kanı peymâne-i sahbâ mey–i nâb ey sâkî

In English

1. O cupbearer, do not torment the lover who longs to see your face; lift the veil from your face and earn a merit.

2. Ah, today my liver burned and turned to crimson blood; O cupbearer, where is the cup of wine, where the pure wine?

Literary and Historical Commentary

With this quatrain the divan's elif section closes, and straight after it begins the "Harfü'l-bâ", the poems ending in the letter be. Pervane Bayram notes that Nigârî placed two rubais addressing the cupbearer at the end of each letter's ghazals and tried to write them in an alphabetical order matching the rhymes of the ghazals. The rhyme of this quatrain is a fine example: the words "‘azâb, sevâb, nâb" end in the letter be. While closing the elif section, the rubai already sounds the letter to come; just as the two rubais at the opening of the divan greet the elif ghazals with an elif rhyme.

The cupbearer of the quatrain is also the beloved, and two things are asked of her. In the first couplet, to lift the veil from her face: rather than tormenting the lover with this veil, showing her face is a meritorious deed. In the second, wine: the liver has burned and turned to blood, and only pure wine can put out this fire. In divan poetry the liver turning to blood is the expression of the deepest pain; the likeness of colour between red wine and crimson blood also ties the two couplets together.

As with the other cupbearer rubais, the metre is not one of the classical rubai patterns; the edition reads it in the ramal pattern "fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün". The third line goes unrhymed, while the other three end on the refrain "ey sâkî".

Bibliography

Online sources