Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef'ûlü mefâîlü mefâîlü feûlün

Yâ Rab bu ḳuluň fevz ü felâḥ semtine varmaz
Girdâb-ı ma‘âṣîye düşer kimse çıḳarmaz

In English

1. O Lord, this servant of Yours does not walk towards salvation and well-being; he falls into the whirlpool of sins, and no one pulls him out.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The couplet is the opening of a kalenderî and fits the pattern "mef'ûlü mefâîlü mefâîlü feûlün"; the identification of the metre is ours. The rhyme is the sound "-armaz" in the words "varmaz" and "çıḳarmaz". In Bilgin's edition it shares a page with the kalenderî "İncitme beni ey güzelim".

Meaning and Figures of Speech

Among Sabrî's poems in the cönk this is the only piece devoted to a subject other than love: the servant's plea to God. The couplet has the air of a münâcât, a prayer of supplication. "Fevz ü felâḥ", salvation and well-being, is a pair used in religious language for salvation in the hereafter. "Girdâb-ı ma‘âṣî", the whirlpool of sins, in the second line evokes an eddy from which a person cannot escape once drawn in; the words "kimse çıḳarmaz", no one pulls him out, suggest that rescue can be expected only from God. The servant creates a humble distance by speaking of himself in the third person as "bu ḳuluň", this servant of Yours.

Historical Context

The couplet is taken from the Merzifon Cönkü published by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019. Hakverdioğlu acquired this manuscript miscellany from Merzifon for his own library and found that a separate ghazal section of the cönk is devoted to Sabrî's poems. Since the article gives only the first stanza of each poem in the cönk, we cannot see the poem beyond this couplet. Hakverdioğlu notes that the poem appears on page 46 of Orhan Bilgin's 1992 edition of the divan; its place in the cönk is page 90. Because Bilgin's book could not be consulted, the full text cannot be given here. The cönk is thought to have been compiled by a Merzifon poet from Sabrî's circle, most probably Fethî; the inclusion of the poem in this compilation shows that Sabrî's verses were still read in Merzifon after his death. For the poet's life and his other poems see the article Eyüb Sabrî.

Bibliography

Online sources