Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilātün fā‘ilün

Āteş-i ġam ger beni yaḳup ser-ā-ser ide kül
Ḫāk-i pāyuñdan senüñ ayrılmayam ey şāḫ-ı gül
Muntaẓırdur göz ḳulaġ urup saña ṣaḥrāda bāġ
Bāġ içinde açılan yir yir gül-i nesrīn degül
Gel bahār-ı ḥüsnüñ eyyāmında dilden dīdeye
Yazın olmalı degüldür ġāyet alçaḳdur göñül
Ṣaḳlaram sīnemde mihrüñ āteşin söndürmezem
Āteş-i sūzān-ı ḳahruñdan yanup olsam da kül
Ca‘ferüñ baḫtı güli gülsün açılsun dir iseñ
Ṣubḥ-veş bir mihr yüzin gösterüp yüzine gül

In English

1. O rose branch, even if the fire of grief burns me and turns me wholly to ash, I shall not part from the dust of your feet.

2. The garden in the open country waits for you, all eyes and ears; what opens here and there in the garden is not eglantine but its eyes and ears.

3. In the days of the spring of your beauty, come up from the heart to the eye; one should not spend the summer in the heart, it is very low ground.

4. I keep the fire of your love hidden in my breast and do not put it out, though I burn and turn to ash in the searing fire of your wrath.

5. If you wish Ca'fer's rose of fortune to laugh and open, show him a sunlike face like the dawn and smile upon him.

Literary and Historical Commentary

A Migration from Heart to Eye

The third couplet rests on the custom, widespread in Anatolia, of migrating to the summer pastures. In the hot season people would go up from the low, stifling plains to the cool highland pastures. The lover tells the beloved to migrate, in the spring of her beauty, from the heart up to the eye: the heart is "ġāyet alçaḳ", very low ground, and the summer is not spent there; the eye lies higher. The beloved's image dwells in the lover's heart all year round, but when spring and summer come she is asked to settle in his eye, that is, in his sight. An everyday pattern of migration becomes a passage between imagining and seeing.

The "-ül" of the rhyme takes in two Turkish words as well: kül, gül, degül, göñül, kül, gül. The word "kül" (ash) is repeated in the opening and fourth couplets: even if the lover turns to ash in the fire of grief, he will not part from the dust of the beloved's feet; even if he turns to ash in the fire of her wrath, he will not put out the fire of love.

A Garden All Eyes and Ears

The second couplet turns the idiom "göz kulak olmak", to be all eyes and ears, into a concrete picture. The garden in the open country is waiting for the beloved; the flowers opening in it are not eglantine but the garden's waiting eyes and ears. The shape of the open flowers is likened to eyes and ears. The pen-name couplet closes on the two meanings of "gül": rose, and "laugh, smile". The lover wants his rose of fortune to "laugh", that is, to open; for this, the beloved must show her sunlike face like the dawn and "smile" upon him. The beloved, addressed in the opening couplet as "şāḫ-ı gül", rose branch, returns in the last word as a smile.

The copies differ at several points in the second couplet: the Ayasofya copy reads "açup" for "urup", the Paris copy "gül ü nergis" for "gül-i nesrīn", and the Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies "gül ü nesrīn". The Paris, Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies read "degül ġāyetde" for "degüldür ġāyet" in the third couplet, and "‘ışḳuñ" for "mihrüñ" in the fourth. Nazmî does not have the ghazal.

Bibliography

Online sources