Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün mefā‘īlün

Ölürsem penbe-i ‘aşḳı ḳoparmam sīne dāġından
Çıḳarsun ḫaste-dil ol penbeyi söyleñ ḳulaġından
İder elbette bir gün ser-firāz üftādesin sāḳī
Sebük-serlik idüp ḳaldırma baş zinhār ayaġından
Tennūr-ı dilde yaḳdı bir ḳul oġlı āteş-i ‘aşḳı
O naḫl-i gül ilāhi eksik olmasın ocaġından
Düşünce aġlamaḳdan dīdeye aġ merdüm-i çeşmüm
Oḳurlar mā-cerā-yı dīde-i giryānı aġından
Çıkup rūze yine mey-ḫāneler fetḥ olsa ey Ṣāḥib
Biraz āzāde olsaḳ şaḥne-i şehrüñ yasaġından

In English

1. Even if I die I will not tear the cotton of love from the branded wound in my breast; tell that sick-hearted one to take the cotton out of his ear (and listen to counsel).

2. The cupbearer will surely one day raise his fallen one high; take care not to act light-headed and lift your head from his foot (from his cup).

3. A Janissary's son (kul oğlu) has lit the fire of love in the oven of the heart; O God, may that rose sapling never be missing from his hearth.

4. When from weeping a white film fell upon my eye, they read the story of the weeping eye from that whiteness of the pupil. The first line does not fall into a sure order; a play between "ak" (white, the white of the eye) and "ağ" (net) can be sensed.

5. O Sâhib, if the fast were over and the taverns opened again, we might be a little free of the ban of the city's police chief.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The third couplet carries two words from the military life of Istanbul into the language of love. "Kul oğlu" means the son of a soldier of the Porte, above all of a Janissary; "ocak" is both the hearth where the fire burns and the name of the Janissary corps. The beloved is a Janissary's son and has lit the fire of love in the oven of the lover's heart. The second line uses a popular blessing, "may his hearth never lack": it wishes both that the fire should not die and that the rose sapling should not leave his hearth, that is, his corps.

Another everyday detail waits in the closing couplet. During Ramadan the taverns were closed, and the subaşı (şahne), responsible for the order of the city, enforced the ban. The poet waits for the end of the month of fasting and the reopening of the taverns; this wish, from the pen of a scholar who rose as high as the office of şeyhülislam, should be read as part of the libertine (rind) manner of divan poetry.

"Penbe" (cotton) is used twice at the opening. Cotton was once laid on a cauterised wound; the lover will not tear this cotton from the wound of love in his breast. Cotton in the ear, by contrast, is the idiom for being deaf to counsel; the poet has the "sick-hearted" one, who listens to no advice, told to take it out. In the next couplet "ayak" also meant a wine cup in old Turkish; to lay one's head at the cupbearer's foot is both to submit to him and never to leave the cup.

For couplet four one copy uses a different verb, and the thesis mistakenly assigns this variant to the second line; the word in question is in the first.

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. 183, ghazal 82 (Millet Library, Ali Emîrî Manzum 243, fol. 29b; Istanbul University Library T. 1710/6, fol. 13b; Istanbul University Library T. 738, fol. 19a). https://openaccess.firat.edu.tr/handle/11508/16014

Online sources