Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün

Ṣındurma şīşe-i dilini mübtelālaruñ
Meyl itme inkisārına ey şeh gedālaruñ
Teşbīh olunmayaydı eger ḫāk-pāyuña
Olmazdı dīdelerde yeri tūtiyālaruñ
Ḳadüm ḫam oldı destümi dut ey nihāl-i nāz
Pīrāne iḳtiżāsı ‘ayāndur ‘aṣālaruñ
Olmaḳla vaṣla vāsıṭa bezm-i ḫayālde
Memnūn luṭf-ı himmetiyüz ḫulyālaruñ
Cebr-i küsūr itdiginüñ muḳteżāsıdur
Gitmez siyāh baḫtlıġı mūmyālaruñ
Sūz-ı cigerde lāzıme-i āh-ı serddür
Āteş olursa mīvesi faṣl-ı şitālaruñ
Rūyında yārüñ olmaġ ile ḫaṭṭ nemā-peẕīr
Ṣāḥib kederler aldı maḳāmın ṣafālaruñ

In English

1. O king, do not break the glass of the heart of those smitten (with love); do not incline to the breaking of beggars.

2. Had it not been likened to the dust of your foot, tutty would have no place in the eyes.

3. O sapling of coquetry, my stature has bent, take my hand; the need of the old for canes is plain.

4. Since they are go-betweens for union in the gathering of imagination, we are grateful for the kind favour of daydreams.

5. It is the consequence of their setting broken bones that the black fortune of the mummia does not leave it.

6. In the burning of the liver a cold sigh is needed; (what) if fire is the fruit of the winter seasons. (The meaning of the couplet is not fully clear.)

7. Sâhib, with the down growing on the beloved's face, griefs have taken the place of delights.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The fifth couplet works a remedy of old medicine through a play on both colour and mathematics. "Mûmyâ" (mummia) was a black, bituminous substance used in binding fractures and dislocations; the setting of broken bones was called "cebr-i küsûr". That the mummia's fortune is black, that is, that its colour is black, is the price of its setting fractures: the medicine that mends the breaks of others cannot be rid of its own blackness. Since the words "cebr" and "küsûr" also recall the science of algebra and fractions in arithmetic, an air of calculation mixes into the couplet.

Topal mentions the third couplet as the place where the poet touches on old age and the cane. The lover's stature has been bent with age, and he asks the beloved to take his hand; calling the beloved a "sapling of coquetry" turns him into a staff for the old man to lean on. The second couplet too is built on an eye remedy: tutty was a medicine applied to the eye in old medicine; the poet ties its value in the eyes to its being likened to the dust of the beloved's foot.

In the opening couplet "inkisâr" means both breaking and a broken heart; it asks that hearts fragile as glass not be broken. The grief of the pen-name couplet is born of the coming of the down.

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. 23 (couplet 3), p. 167, ghazal 67 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 26a; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 11b; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 17a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources