Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Yoluña yilmekile kendümi oñarımadum
Anuñ içün baña şâhum yiler oñmaz didiler

In English

1. By running on your road I could not mend myself, could not set myself right; that is why, my sultan, they told me "the one who runs never prospers".

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This is the last of the single couplets in Latîfî's entry on Siyâbî. The lines do not rhyme; the couplet may be an inner couplet of a ghazal (gazel), but nothing else of that ghazal survives. Hüsameddin and Kınalızâde do not quote this couplet.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The whole refinement of the couplet rests on two verbs of old Turkish. "Yilmek" means to run, to hurry; "oñmak" to heal, to come right, to prosper; and "oñarmak" comes from the same root and carries the sense of mending, setting something right. The poet says that, running and running on the beloved's road, he could never mend himself. "Yiler oñmaz", the one who runs never prospers, in the second line is a popular judgement in the mould of a proverb, reported from other people's mouths: whoever hurries does not reach his goal. The couplet thus binds the lover's endless rushing about with a sentence of advice.

The word "oñarmak" gains a separate meaning in the hands of a tailor poet; a tailor's work is to sew up rents and mend old clothes. The image of a tailor who cannot mend himself agrees with Siyâbî's other couplets in which he sets his trade beside love. The source says nothing of this link with the trade; it is a meaning drawn from the text. Addressing the beloved as "şâhum", my sultan, is the usual form of address in divan poetry; spoken here in a craftsman's voice it gives the couplet a half-joking air.

Historical Context

The couplet is found only in Latîfî, with no hint of when it was composed. After this couplet Latîfî passes to Siyâbî's piece on income. The poet's life story is in the article Siyâbî: The Tailor Poet of Merzifon.

Bibliography

Online sources