Siyâbî, Couplet 2: Ben o derzi güzelüñ

Couplet 2 — Ben o derzi güzelüñ eskiden âvâresiyin

Amasya05 Editorial Board • Editor: Mevlüt Erdem Öztürk • 01 October 2026 • Updated: 13 October 2026 • 3 min reading

The tailor poet Siyâbî's couplet on a lover smitten with a tailor beauty: a poor lover whose two collars never meet, the echoes of the word eski and Hüsameddin's Dürzî reading.

Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Ben o derzi güzelüñ eskiden âvâresiyin
Olmadum iki yaḳa ıssı hele bî-çâresiyin

In English

1. I have long been the vagabond lover of that tailor beauty; my two collars never came together, I am still his helpless slave.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

Both lines close on the sound "-âresiyin", in "âvâresiyin" and "bî-çâresiyin". Latîfî gives the couplet with the word "velehu", also his, after the opening couplet that answers Necâtî. Quoting the same couplet from Latîfî, Hüsameddin writes "Dürzî güzelin" instead of "derzi güzelüñ" and gives the verbal ending as "-yem"; the word Dürzî denotes a member of the Druze sect and does not fit the tailoring images of the couplet, so it is probably a misreading. The text on this page follows the edition.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The couplet tells of a tailor poet smitten with a tailor beauty, and every word of it carries the air of the shop. The word "eskiden" means "for a long time", but within it one also hears "eski", the old cloth that passes through a tailor's hands. The real play is in the second line. "İki yakası bir araya gelmemek", for one's two collars never to come together, is a well-known Turkish idiom for never managing to set one's life in order, never making ends meet; the phrase "iki yaka ıssı olmamak", not to become master of two collars, built with "yaka ıssı", collar owner, calls up this idiom. In a tailor's hands, however, the collar is a real piece: the two front edges of a garment are joined and sewn. The poet is both a poor lover who has never got his living in order and something like a garment whose two edges have never been joined, left unfinished. Latîfî does not explain the couplet; this meeting of idiom and trade is our own inference from the text.

The likeness of sound between "âvâre" (vagabond) and "bî-çâre" (helpless) ties the lover's wandering to his helplessness. The language of the couplet is plain; there is hardly a Persian compound, and the idioms of spoken Turkish come to the fore.

Historical Context

The couplet names no one; the words "o derzi güzel", that tailor beauty, suggest that the poet meant a young man of the same trade. Hüsameddin and the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü also give the couplet among Siyâbî's examples. The tailor's life is told on the page Siyâbî.