Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün

Men ki ser-gerdân-ı aşkım hîç kârım kalmadı
Ayb kılman dostum elde ihtiyârım kalmadı
Şîşe-i takvâmı kırmıştır melâmet taşları
Rind-i rüsvâyım benim nâmûs u ârım kalmadı
Kays-veş sahrâ-yı firkatte tavattun eyleyip
Vahşet-i nâs eyledim bir gam-güsârım kalmadı
Zulmet-i hicrândayım ben subh u şâmım bir benim
Mihr-i vuslattan cüdâ oldum nehârım kalmadı
Sarf-ı efkâr eylemem dünyâ gezend ü sûduna
İştigâl-i aşkdan özge fikârım kalmadı
Geldi bir kez yanıma vâh berk-veş geçdi hemân
Neyleyim kûşemde bir şeb nâzlı yârım kalmadı
Hasta-ı hicrânınım olsun begim vaslın devâ
Rahm kıl başın içün Sabrî karârım kalmadı

In English

1. I, who am dizzy and bewildered with love, have no business left at all. Do not reproach me, my friends; I have no will left in my hands.

2. The stones of blame have broken the glass of my piety. I am a disgraced rind (libertine); I have neither honour nor shame left.

3. Like Kays (Mecnun), I made the desert of separation my home and shied away from people; I have not a single friend left to share my grief.

4. I am in the darkness of separation; my morning and my evening are one. I have been parted from the sun of union, and I have no daylight left.

5. I give no thought to the loss and gain of the world. I have no thought left other than the business of love.

6. Once she came to my side, but alas, she passed at once like lightning. What can I do, my coy beloved did not stay a single night in my corner.

7. I am sick with your absence; my lord, let union with you be my cure. Have mercy, by your head; Sabrî has no patience, no rest left.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a ghazal of seven couplets, and the pen name (mahlas) appears in the last couplet. The redif (refrain word) is "-ım kalmadı" ("I have no ... left"), and the rhyme is the sound "-âr" in the words "kâr, ihtiyâr, âr, gam-güsâr, nehâr, fikâr, yâr, karâr"; each couplet lists one loss and returns to the same point. The metre is "fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilâtün fâilün", one of the most widely used patterns of aruz (quantitative metre); the source does not state the metre, and the identification is ours. Hakan Yekbaş quotes the ghazal as a sample from Orhan Bilgin's edition of the divan in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü. To whom and when it was written is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Every couplet of the ghazal counts what love has taken from a person: work, will, honour, friend, daylight, thought, the beloved and at last patience. The repetition of the redif turns this inventory into a lament. In the second couplet the metaphor built between "şîşe-i takvâ", the glass of piety, and "melâmet taşları", the stones of blame, is the familiar picture of the rind in divan poetry: the glass broken by the stones of reproach is the collapse of the lover's reputation for piety. Kays in the third couplet is Mecnun, the lover of Leylâ; his flight into the desert and his shying away from people are the traditional example of separation driving the lover into solitude.

In the fourth couplet the contrasts of darkness and sun, morning and evening, night and day express the difference between separation and union; "mihr" means both sun and love and gives the couplet a second sense. "Berk-veş", like lightning, in the sixth couplet renders the beloved's brief visit through a concrete image. In the last couplet a double entendre (tevriye) can be sensed between the pen name "Sabrî" and the phrase "karârım kalmadı": the poet who bears the name of patience says that his patience is exhausted. This reading is ours. Although the language is woven with Arabic and Persian compounds, it is clear and fluent; Yekbaş's remark that the poet kept feeling and thought in the foreground holds for this ghazal too.

Historical Context

There is no information about the occasion of the ghazal. According to Yekbaş's entry, Sabrî's poems were gathered into a divan after his death, in 1309 (1893), by Bayramzâde Yusuf Sıdkî Hoca, and Orhan Bilgin published the critical text of this divan in 1992. The ghazal appears on pages 20 and 74 of Bilgin's book; one of the page numbers presumably belongs to the study and the other to the text section. That a poet who died at twenty-four describes love as ruin and exhaustion invites a biographical reading; but there is no record in the sources linking the poem with a particular event in the poet's life. For the poet's life see the article Eyüb Sabrî.

Bibliography

Online sources