Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâʿilâtün fâʿilâtün fâʿilâtün fâʿilün (metre identified by us)

Ey kıya bakışlu dil-ber v’ey harâmî gözlü yâr
Eyledüñ zülfüñ gibi sabrum metâ’ın târmâr
Mahv kıldı göz yaşı cânâ tenüm hâkin ki tâ
Hâtıruñ âyînesine konmaya benden gubâr
Kalmadı bir yir ki koyam başuma hecrüñde hâk
Şöyle kim virdi cihânı garka çeşm-i eşk-bâr
Bî-’aded cân isterem Hak’dan du’âlar eyleyüp
Ey Mesîhâ-dem yoluñda ölmek içün bî-şumâr
Düşmeyem dirseñ nazardan ey gözüm yaşı revân
Eyleme nâ-mahreme râz-ı derûnum âşkâr
Zerrece mihrüñ yolında aynuma gelmez eger
Rûzgâr ey seng-dil itse tenüm hâkin gubâr
Ey Refîkî feth olmazdı mahabbet kişveri
Tîr-i âhum olmasa kaddüm kemânından güzâr

In English

1. O sidelong-glancing heart-stealer, O beloved with brigand eyes, you have scattered the goods of my patience like your locks.

2. Beloved, my tears have wiped away the dust of my body, so that not a speck of dust from me should settle on the mirror of your heart.

3. In your absence there is no place left where I might pour dust on my head (in mourning); my weeping eye has so drowned the world.

4. O you whose breath is like the Messiah's (raising the dead), praying to God I ask for countless lives, to die countless times on your road.

5. O my eye, my flowing tears: if you would not fall from favour, do not reveal the secret of my heart to a stranger.

6. O stone-hearted one, even if time turns the dust of my body to powder on the road of your love (your sun), it would not matter to me a mote.

7. O Refîkî, the land of love would never have been conquered had the arrow of my sigh not passed from the bow of my bent body.

Literary and Historical Commentary

From the Anthology of Response Poems

The text comes from Mecma'u'n-Nezâ'ir, the great anthology of response poems compiled by Nazmî of Edirne in the first half of the sixteenth century. The anthology gathers poems written in the same metre and rhyme; according to the entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü it contains 58 poems by Refîkî. The ghazal is taken here from the text that entry quotes as an example. In Köksal's edition the poem is number 921, headed "Nazîre-i Refîkî", and stands among the nazires to Ahmed Paşa's ghazal opening "Ey 'arûs-ı hüsnüñe Hindû gözüm âyînedâr / V'ey cemâlüñ bâgına dest-i sabâ 'anber-nisâr" (no. 892). The "-âr" rhyme comes from this model. Refîkî's second poem on the same model is Ghazal 13.

Tears, Dust and Arrow

The ghazal proceeds through a sequence of images built on earth, dust and tears. In the second couplet the lover wipes away the earth of his body with his tears, so that not a speck of him should settle on the mirror of the beloved's heart; in the sixth the same earth turns to dust in the hands of time, and the lover does not care. Between them the third couplet turns to the custom of mourning: pouring earth on the head is a sign of grief, but tears have so drowned the world that no earth is left to find. In the fifth couplet the idiom "nazardan düşmek", to fall from favour, literally to fall from the eye, is addressed to the tears; a tear flowing from the eye falls from it already, and gives the secret away. In the sixth couplet "mihr" is both love and the sun and forms a congruence with "zerre", the mote, since motes are seen in sunlight. In the pen-name couplet the bent body is a bow and the sigh an arrow; only with this arrow has the land of love been conquered. The "beloved with brigand eyes" and the plundered goods of patience in the first couplet belong to the same world of arrows and war. The poet's biography, Refîkî Ali Çelebi (İbrîzâde), also has more to say on the anthology of response poems that holds Refîkî's other poems.

Bibliography

  • Mehmet Fatih Köksal, "Refîkî/Refi'î", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 2013 (updated 2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/refiki
  • Edirneli Nazmî, Mecma'u'n-Nezâ'ir, ed. M. Fatih Köksal, Ankara: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, 2012 (e-book); text taken from the quotation in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü.

Online sources