Original Ottoman Turkish Text

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

Āteş-i ‘ışḳuñla gerçi meskenüm külḫan durur
Sen Ḫalīlüñ şevḳi ile ol baña gülşen durur
Şem‘ yaḳup n’eylesün her-sāyeler çün her gice
Āteş-i sīnem şu‘ā‘ından cihān rūşen durur
Çāresi siḥr ögrenüp āhen-rübā olmaḳ gerek
Bildüñ ey dil çün kim anuñ göñlini āhen durur
Sīneme zaḫm urıcaḳ peykānuñuñ surḫ olduġı
Āteş-i dildendür ey cān ṣanma kim ḳandan durur
Bir çemendür bezm-i ehl-i dil ki anda Ca‘ferā
Gūyiyā cām u ṣurāḥī lāle vü sūsen durur

In English

1. True, with the fire of your love my dwelling is a stokehole; but through longing for you, my Halil (Abraham), it is a rose garden to me.

2. Why should the neighbours light candles every night? The world is bright with the rays of the fire in my breast.

3. O heart, you have learned that her heart is iron; the cure is to learn sorcery and become a magnet.

4. That the tip of your arrow turns red when it wounds my breast, O soul, comes from the fire of the heart; do not think it comes from blood.

5. O Ca'fer, the gathering of the people of heart is a meadow; there the cup and the flask are like the tulip and the iris.

Literary and Historical Commentary

The Fire of Abraham

Behind the first couplet lies a story told in the Qur'an: the fire into which Nimrod threw Abraham became, by God's command, cool and safe for him, a rose garden. Abraham's title is "Ḫalīl", the friend of God. The lover's house has become a stokehole (külhan), the furnace in which the fire of a bathhouse is kept, through the fire of love; but longing for the beloved turns it into a rose garden like Abraham's fire. The word "Ḫalīl" can be read here in two ways, as the prophet's title and as "friend, beloved". The refrain is "durur" (is), and "-en" sounds in the rhyme: külḫan, gülşen, rūşen, āhen, ḳandan, sūsen.

The second and fourth couplets carry the same fire elsewhere. The fire in the lover's breast is so bright that the neighbours need not light candles; it lights the whole world. That the arrowhead looks red as it comes out of the wound is not from blood but because it has been heated in the fire of the heart. This is an example of ingenious invented cause (hüsn-i ta'lil), setting the real cause aside and putting a poetic one in its place.

Iron Heart and Magnet

The third couplet likens the beloved's hard heart to iron and shows the lover a remedy: to learn sorcery and become a magnet (āhen-rübā, iron-drawer). The power of the stone that draws iron is counted among the secrets of nature in old books; the lover, too, will be able to draw the beloved's iron heart to himself only by such a secret. The couplet widens the familiar image of the "stone-hearted beloved" with a curiosity about natural science.

The pen-name couplet likens the gathering of the people of heart to a meadow, the cup full of red wine to a tulip, the long-necked flask to an iris. This last likeness, turning the gathering and the garden into each other, completes the transformation that began in the first couplet with the stokehole turning into a rose garden. The copies stay very close to one another here, and Erünsal's thesis notes no variant worth mentioning; nor does the poem appear in Nazmî's anthology.

Bibliography

Online sources