Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Za‘ferāndur merhem-i zaḫm-ı dil-i bī-çāremüz
Beste-leb olmaz olur ḫandān anuñçün yāremüz
Girye-i mestī dil-i şeydāda māde-zāddur
Eylemiş üstād-ı çūb-ı tākden gehvāremüz
Dest-i dil-dāre sezā ta‘dād-ı ‘uşşāḳ itmege
Rişte āh o zerre tesbīḥ-i dil-i ṣad-pāremüz
Āsumān-ı ‘aşḳ u şevḳüz mihr-i rūy-ı yār ile
Seyl-i eşk ü dāġ-ı dildür s̱ābit-i seyyāremüz
Bir ḳadi bālā-perīdür eyleyen āhum dırāz
Mürtefi‘dür ḫayli Ṣāḥib menba‘-ı fevvāremüz

In English

1. Saffron is the salve for the wound of our helpless heart; so our wound does not close its lips but is always laughing.

2. The weeping of drunkenness is inborn in our mad heart; the master made our cradle from the wood of the vine.

3. Counting the lovers befits the beloved's hand; the sigh is (its) thread, and each particle of our hundred-pieced heart is a bead of (that) rosary.

4. With the sun of the beloved's face we are the sky of love and longing; the flood of tears and the brand of the heart are our fixed star and our planet.

5. What makes my sigh long is one with a stature tall as a fairy; Sâhib, the source of our fountain is very high.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The opening couplet starts from an old belief: saffron was believed to make people laugh. When saffron is the salve of the heart's wound, the wound too cannot close its lips and laughs; the open mouth of the wound thus turns into a laugh. Sâhib, as seen elsewhere in the divan, uses old medicine and popular lore as material for a hüsn-i ta'lil (poetic aetiology).

The wit of the pen-name couplet rests on a law of water. Water spouting from a fountain can rise as high as the level of its source; the higher the source, the higher the water rises. The lover's sigh is a fountain stretching toward the sky; what makes this sigh so long is the height of the source, that is, the beloved's fairy-tall stature. In an age when pools with fountains were spreading in the gardens of Istanbul mansions and in public fountains, this comparison carries an everyday sight into poetry.

The second couplet presents the lover's drunkenness as an inborn state: his cradle was made from the wood of the vine, that is, he grew up on the tree of wine. In the third couplet the sigh becomes the thread of a rosary and the particles of the hundred-pieced heart its beads, and the counting of lovers is left to the beloved's hand. The fourth couplet draws on astronomy: the flood of tears is a planet that never stays in place, and the wound in the heart a fixed star that never stirs.

Bibliography

  • Meral Topal, Pîrî-zâde Mehmed Sâhib Hayatı, Edebî Kişiliği, Eserleri ve Divanı'nın Tenkitli Metni, MA thesis, Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Elazığ 2004, p. 150, ghazal 52 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 22b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 9a; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 13b). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources