Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilâtün fe‘ilün (remel-i mahbûn)

Vahşet irgürdi ‘akıldan baña bu turfe gazâl
Düşdi Mecnûn-sıfat peykerüme hasbü’l-hâl
İtdi mûdan beni kim al ile zülf-i siyehüñ
Buldum andan berü hecrüñde nice dürlü kemâl
Âh kim itmedi bir lahza güzer hâtır ki
Gerçi ten oldı gamuñdan sanemâ mahz-ı hayâl
Oldı engüşt-nümâ halk-ı cihâna ten-i zâr
Meh-ruhuñ mihri kılaldan beni mânend-i hilâl
Hoş geçer sâyelerinde dün ü gün cân-ı za‘îf
Dikeli tîrlerüñ sahn-ı dile tâze nihâl
Tâlib-i hüsn ile vuslat dileyen bir olmaz
Nitekim bûs u kenâr ile temâşâ-yı cemâl
Çokdan eylerdi Refîkî’yi firâkuñ mürde
Tutmasa idi anı zinde ger ümmîd-i visâl

In English

1. This rare gazelle has startled me out of my wits and made me wild; as the case required, my body became like Majnun’s.

2. Your black tress, with its trickery, made me like a hair; since then I have found many kinds of perfection in separation from you.

3. Alas, I never crossed (your) mind for a single moment; yet, O idol, my body has become pure phantom from grief for you.

4. Since love of your moon-face turned me into a crescent, my wailing body has become a thing the world points at with its finger.

5. Since your arrows were planted in the courtyard of the heart like fresh saplings, my feeble soul passes day and night pleasantly in their shade.

6. The seeker of beauty and the one who desires union are not the same; just as kissing and embracing are not the same as contemplating beauty.

7. Your separation would long ago have left Refîkî dead, had not the hope of union kept him alive.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Crescent People Point At

The custom of watching for the new moon becomes, in the fourth couplet, an image of love. Those who sighted the crescent of Ramadan or of the feast would point to it with their finger; the epithet “engüşt-nümâ” (pointed at with the finger) therefore suits both the crescent and a person who has become the talk of the town. The lover’s body has grown thin with love for the beloved’s moon-face, turned into a crescent and become something everyone points at. In couplet five the beloved’s arrows are planted in the lover’s heart like fresh saplings, and the soul rests in their shade; the weapon that wounds turns into a tree that gives shade.

The sixth couplet draws a distinction. The one who seeks beauty and the one who desires union are not the same person; kissing and embracing (“bûs u kenâr”) and contemplating beauty (“temâşâ-yı cemâl”) are different things. The couplet recalls the value placed on the contemplation of beauty in the Sufi understanding of love, though it does not say so in an explicit Sufi term. At the very start the beloved is a gazelle who has “startled” the lover out of his wits; the word “vahşet” means both alarm and wildness, so the lover comes to resemble Majnun, who lived with gazelles in the desert. The word “mûdan” in line one of the second couplet is unclear; the translation offers a reading in which the lover has grown as thin as a hair because of the tress.

On Kıvâmî’s Model

The Mecma‘u’n-Nezâ’ir ties this ghazal to a poem by Kıvâmî: “Öpmege la‘l-i lebüñ oldı şehâ emr-i muhâl / Koçmaga ince bilüñ mümteni‘ oldı bu hayâl.” In the model, kissing the lip and embracing the waist are counted impossible; Refîkî’s sixth couplet is like an answer to this impossibility: contemplating beauty is something other than kissing and embracing, and perhaps higher. The poem does not appear in the Pervâne copy.

Bibliography

Online sources