Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Feʿilâtün feʿilâtün feʿilâtün feʿilün (metre identified by us)

Kılalı câm-ı lebin yâdı beni cânâ mest
Oldu gamhâne-i aşk içre gönül bâde-perest

In English

1. Beloved, ever since the memory of the cup of your lips made me drunk, my heart has become a worshipper of wine in the house of love's sorrow.

Literary and Historical Commentary

This opening couplet is the only piece among Sülûkî's verses transmitted solely by Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar. Hüsameddin gives it with "Velehu", this too is his, as an example of his ghazals; it is not found in Âşık Çelebi, Beyânî or Kınalızâde. Since Hüsameddin does not say which source he used, the couplet cannot today be confirmed by another witness. As the other couplet in his entry, the opening verse beginning "Sanma çeşmim", is also found in the anthologies, this one too may have come from a lost copy of the divan or from an anthology.

The couplet's design rests on the familiar likeness between lips and cup. The red lips are a cup full of wine; what makes the lover drunk is not the wine itself but the "yâd", the memory, of that cup. The drunkenness is born of a memory, yet the heart ends up a real "bâde-perest", a lover of wine: the imagined cup leads to the actual drink. "Ġamḫâne-i ʿışḳ", the house of love's sorrow, is a phrase that recalls the tavern; the lover drinks his wine in the house of grief, far from any gathering of joy. The two lines of the opening couplet rhyme on "mest" and "-perest". The metre is the form of remel that opens with the short syllables of "feʿilâtün". The gap between Hüsameddin's dates and the anthologies is discussed in Sülûkî Mehmed Çelebi (Memî Çelebizâde).

Bibliography

Online sources