Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilâtün fâ‘ilün (remel)

Ey sanem düşdüm cüdâ tâ sen büt-i tannâzdan
Murg-ı zeyrekken göñül kalmış durur pervâzdan
Nâle itmekligi kânûn eylesem ‘ayb eylemeñ
Kaddümi çeng eyledi dûr oldugum dem-sâzdan
Bend-i zülfüñden halâs olmasa murg-ı dil n’ola
Çünki kurtılmaz kebûter pençe-i şeh-bâzdan
Feth iderdüm kişver-i vasluñı cânâ bî-nizâ‘
Ger baña nusret ola âh-ı ‘alem-efrâzdan
Ey dil âheng-i ta‘alluk itme nakş-ı dil-keşe
Üns-i târân çün keser çeng-i ecel dem-sâzdan
Şîve vü reftâr ile kaddüñ nihâlin dir gören
Fi’l-mesel bir servdür mîve getürmiş nâzdan
Şâh Mahmûd olayum dirseñ bisât-ı ‘âleme
Ey Refîkî ruh getürme makdem-i Ayâz’dan

In English

1. O idol, ever since I fell apart from you, coquettish idol, my heart, clever bird though it was, has been unable to fly.

2. Do not blame me if I make lament my “kânûn” (my rule, and the kanun zither); being far from my fellow musician has bent my stature like a harp.

3. No wonder if the bird of the heart cannot get free of the bond of your tress; for the pigeon cannot escape the falcon’s claw.

4. Beloved, if victory came to me from my banner-raising sigh, I would conquer the land of your union (in the Pervâne: of your beauty) without a fight.

5. O heart, do not tune yourself to attachment to an alluring “nakş” (a picture, and a kind of composition); for the harp of death cuts the strings from the musician.

6. Whoever sees the sapling of your stature, with its grace and its gait, says: “So to speak, a cypress that has borne the fruit of coquetry.”

7. Refîkî, if you would be the Sultan Mahmud of the world’s carpet (and chessboard), do not turn your face (“ruh”, also the rook) from the footstep of Ayaz.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Instruments and Chessmen

Two couplets of the ghazal are loaded with terms of music. In the second couplet “kânûn” is both rule and the kanun zither; the “çeng” is a harp-shaped instrument, and the “dem-sâz” a fellow musician playing in concert, and so a companion in sorrow. The lover’s bent stature resembles a harp and his wailing is like the sound of that instrument. In the fifth couplet “âheng” (tuning, harmony), “nakş” (both a picture and a type of composition), “târ” (string) and “çeng-i ecel” (the harp of death) come together. The exact sense of the couplet is obscure, but what it says is roughly this: the heart should not attach itself to an alluring “nakş”, because death parts a man from those he loves as one would part a musician from his strings.

This time the pen-name couplet turns to history and to chess. The devotion between Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna and his slave Ayaz is a familiar example of love and service in Ottoman poetry. The word “bisât” means both carpet and chessboard; “şâh” is both sultan and the king in chess, and “ruh” both face and the rook. Whoever wishes to be Mahmud on the board of the world must not turn his face from Ayaz’s footprint. Refîkî’s use of chess terms in a pen-name couplet is also seen in Ghazal 33. The lover’s sigh, in the fourth couplet, becomes an army raising banners; the same image recurs in the pen-name couplet of Refîkî’s other ghazal on this model (Ghazal 39).

The Model of Şâmî Beg

The model is the same in both anthologies: Şâmî’s ghazal “Ey meh-i nâ-mihrbânum vaz gelme nâzdan / Ben ölürsem gam degül ol gamze-i gammâzdan”. In the heading Pervâne Bey introduces the model’s poet as “Şāmlu-zāde Muṣṭafā Beg dirler mīr-livādur”, that is, a district governor. The Pervâne’s five-couplet text leaves out the couplets of the harp of death and of the fruiting cypress. In the opening couplet the Pervâne reads “Murġ-i zīrek”, in the fourth “kişver-i ḥüsnüñi”.

Bibliography

Online sources