Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Ey bâġbân olsa kokardı sözüm bûdur
Bâġ-ı cihânda kaddi gibi müşg-bâr serv

In English

1. O gardener, this is my word (my word is a fragrance): were there in the garden of the world a cypress shedding musk like that stature, its scent would be known. (The two senses of "bûdur" in the first line and the reading of the couplet are ours.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This couplet is the only trace that Sânî also wrote kasides. Latîfî says that he took it from a kaside (qasida) of Sânî's with the redif (refrain word) "serv", that is, a kaside each of whose couplets ends with the word "serv", cypress. The source does not say to whom the kaside was presented, how many couplets it had or where this one stood in it. Since the lines of the couplet do not rhyme with each other, it is not an opening couplet (matla) but an inner couplet. Hüsameddin too quotes the couplet from Latîfî.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

In divan poetry the cypress is the best-known likeness of the beloved's stature; but the cypress has no scent. Sânî puts this lack at the centre of the couplet. He addresses the gardener and seems to ask him to show, in the garden of the world, a cypress fragrant with musk like the beloved's stature: were there such a cypress, its scent would spread everywhere and everyone would know it. In other words, the beloved's stature resembles the cypress, but the cypress cannot resemble the beloved, since the beloved is both cypress-tall and musk-scented.

The word "bûdur" at the end of the first line can be read in two ways. Read as "budur", it means "this is my word" and introduces what is said to the gardener. Read as "bû-dur", with the Persian "bû", scent, it means "my word is a scent, my word is something fragrant". This second reading agrees with all the images of scent in the couplet, the words "kokardı" (would smell) and "müşg-bâr" (shedding musk). The edition writes the word with a long vowel, "bûdur"; it cannot be said with certainty that the poet intended the double entendre (tevriye). There is a clear congruence of images (tenasüp) among gardener, garden, cypress and musk.

Historical Context

Nothing records the occasion of the kaside. Latîfî gives the couplet as the last example in Sânî's entry; the poet's other poems and his life can be followed from the article Sânî Yûsuf Çelebi.

Bibliography

Online sources