Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Sāḳī bilince olduġun andan ricām cām
Ṣundı lebüñ olup o büt-i ḫoş-ḫırām rām
Şeb-būy-ı ḫoş-şemīm ḫaṭṭından kināyedür
Meşhūr-ı ‘ālem olduġı cennet-meşāmm şām
Bu levḥde miṡāl-i elif müstaḳīm olan
İtmez ḳadin edāniye vaḳt-i selām lām
Maḫṣūṣ-ı maṭbaḫ-ı ni‘am-ı girdgārdur
Olmaḳ bu ḫalḳ-ı ‘āleme baḫş-ı ṭa‘ām ‘ām
Ṣāḥib baḳılsa ġāyeti seng-i mezārdur
Kesb itse de ne deñlü nigīnveş enām nām

In English

1. When the cupbearer understood that what I asked of him was the cup, that idol of graceful gait grew gentle and offered me your lip (the cup of the lip).

2. Damascus (Şam), known to the world for its paradise-like scent, is an allusion to the fragrant night-scented flower of the beloved's down (Şam also means evening, and the darkness of the down recalls the evening).

3. One who stands upright like the letter elif on this tablet of the world does not bend his stature into a lâm before base people when he greets them.

4. That the giving of food should be general, for all the people of the world, belongs only to the kitchen of the Creator's bounties.

5. Sâhib, however much one may win a name among people, like a seal-stone, in the end, if one looks, it is a gravestone.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Every line of the ghazal ends with the same game: the last word is the final syllable of the word before it. "Ricâm câm", "hırâm râm", "meşâmm şâm", "selâm lâm", "ta‘âm ‘âm", "enâm nâm"; in this echoing sequence the second word comes out of the first yet carries a meaning of its own: cup, tame, Damascus, the letter lâm, general, name. This way of turning the rhyme into a display of craft agrees with Sâhib's fondness for wordplay seen in other ghazals, and it rests the meaning of each couplet on its final word.

The third couplet draws a moral from the shape of letters. Elif is a single upright stroke; lâm is a letter that bends and curls at the bottom. The upright man does not bow like a lâm before base people, even when greeting them. Here the ghazal leaves its air of love and turns into counsel, and the next two couplets follow the same road.

The pen-name couplet compares two stones. The nigîn is the seal-stone on which its owner's name is engraved; the dead man's name is also written on the gravestone. All his life a man labours to cut his name into people's minds as on a seal-stone, but the last stone to bear his name is the stone on his grave. The fourth couplet carries the same humility: the table that feeds the whole world belongs to God alone, and the generosity of His servant has its limits.

Şebbû, named in couplet two, is a flower named "night-scent" because it gives off its fragrance in the evening; Şam is both Damascus, famed for gardens likened to paradise, and the hour of evening.

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. 175, ghazal 74 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 27b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 12a; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 18b). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources