Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: Mefʿûlü fâʿilâtü mefâʿîlü fâʿilün (metre identified by us)

Zülfi yüzin ki örte gelür göñlüme ġubâr
Esrâr-ı ḫaṭṭı irişicek göresin ṭozı
Dil şöyle ḫaste oldı gelelden yüzine ḫaṭ
Bî-çâre giceden seçemez oldı gündüzi

In English

1. When his locks veil his face, dust (sorrow) settles on my heart; when the secrets of the down on his face appear, then you will see the dust indeed.

2. Since the down came upon his face my heart has grown so sick that the poor thing can no longer tell night from day.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The first down appearing on a young beauty's face, the "ḫaṭ" of divan poetry, is the subject of this two-couplet kıt'a. The word also means writing, script, and the poet works this double sense in the terms of calligraphy. "Ġubâr" is both dust and the ġubâr script, written in very small letters. In the first couplet the locks veiling the face bring dust, a sorrow, to the heart; but the real "dust" will be seen when fine down appears on the face like ġubâr writing. "Esrâr-ı ḫaṭ", the secrets of the down, refers to the mystery of the hair on the face as well as to the subtleties of a script hard to read. This link between down, dust and script also shows Sülûkî, a scribe by profession, carrying the language of his own trade into his verse; the anthologists draw no such link, and it is our inference from the text.

The second couplet closes the kıt'a with the contrast of night and day. The face is day, the dark down night; seen together, the lover's heart can no longer tell them apart. The idiom "not to tell day from night" also describes a state of exhaustion from sickness and sleeplessness. The two couplets rhyme in "ṭozı" and "gündüzi", and the first lines are unrhymed, as the kıt'a form requires. The piece appears in the same order in Âşık Çelebi and Kınalızâde; Beyânî gives only the first couplet, altering its second line to "Ḫaṭṭ-ı ʿiẕârı". How Âşık Çelebi and Sülûkî met is told at length in the biography Sülûkî Mehmed Çelebi (Memî Çelebizâde).

Bibliography

Primary sources

Online sources