Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Eylegil mey lebinden bize bahs ey sâkî
Yaramaz özgeden itmek size bahs ey sâkî
Kıl atâ şehd-i lebinle mezeyi cânımıza
Eylegil şâm u seher yüzyüze bahs ey sâkî

In English

1. O cupbearer, talk to us of the wine of your lips; it does you no good to talk of anything else.

2. O cupbearer, grant our souls a relish with the honey of your lips; converse face to face morning and evening.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The rhyme word of the quatrain is "bahs", and each rhyming line ties this word to the refrain "ey sâkî". Bahs in Arabic means inquiry, discussion; in the madrasa tradition the mutual discussion of a subject, the learned disputation, is called bahs. The poet carries this word into the tavern and asks the cupbearer to open a discussion on one subject only: the wine of her lips. Talking of anything else "does you no good"; the only subject of the gathering is the beloved's lips. Against the disputations of zealots and preachers the tavern sets up a disputation of its own.

In the second couplet the conversation turns into a table. The cupbearer is to grant the lovers' souls a "meze" with the honey of her lips; meze is the light food eaten with wine and in divan poetry is often named with the lover's burned liver, with kebab. This time the meze is the honey of the lips. The quatrain closes with the wish for "yüzyüze bahs", face-to-face conversation; for the lover the greatest blessing is to be able to talk with the beloved in the same gathering.

Like the first, this second cupbearer rubai at the close of the te section bases its rhyme on the next letter, se; "bahs" ends in Arabic with the letter se. Immediately after, under the heading "Harfü's-sâ", the se ghazals begin. The two quatrains also share a metre, the ramal pattern "fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün".

Bibliography

Online sources