Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: mef‘ūlü fā‘ilātü mefā‘īlü fā‘ilün

Bāġında ḥüsnüñüñ olalı āşikār sebz
Eşkümden oldı cümle yemīn ü yesār sebz
Ḫaṭṭuñ ḫayāli ṭutsa gözüm kūşesin n’ola
Olsa ‘aceb degül ṭaraf-ı cūybār sebz
Çün sebze-zār içinde olur şāḫ-ı gül laṭīf
Geyse yaraşur ol ṣanem-i gül-‘ıẕār sebz
Ṭarf-ı ruḫuñda sebze-i ter bitdügi bu kim
Yaşumdan oldı ḫoş yaşarup her kenār sebz
Ol dem ki Ca‘fer ola hevā-yı ḫaṭṭuñla ḫāk
Üstinde ḳabrinüñ bitüre rūzgār sebz

In English

1. Since green (the down) appeared in the garden of your beauty, my right and my left have all turned green from my tears.

2. What wonder if the image of your down takes the corner of my eye? It is no wonder if the edge of the stream turns green.

3. Since the rose branch looks lovely in the midst of greenery, it would become that rose-cheeked idol to wear green.

4. That fresh green has grown at the edge of your cheek is because every edge, watered by my tears, has turned pleasantly green.

5. When Ca'fer has become dust through longing for your down, time will grow green upon his grave.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Green Everywhere

All the couplets of the ghazal turn around a single colour, named in the Persian refrain "sebz", green. The down appearing on the beloved's cheek is likened in divan poetry to a green meadow, a fresh greenery; Câfer Çelebi keeps up this likeness for five couplets and shows green growing from a different place in each. The rhyme sounds "-ār": āşikār, yesār, cūybār, gül-‘ıẕār, kenār, rūzgār. The short, dense structure of the ghazal rests on turning a single image over from different sides.

In the first two couplets the cause of the greenery is the lover's tears. Since the down appeared on the beloved's face, the lover's tears water everything around him and turn it green; the eye is a stream, and greenery grows at the edge of a stream. The fourth couplet builds the same relation from the other side: the down growing at the edge of the cheek, too, comes from the lover's tears watering that edge. This bond of cause and effect between tears and down is an ingenious invented cause (hüsn-i ta'lil).

A Green Garment and Grass on a Grave

The third couplet advises the beloved to wear green: the rose branch looks lovely among green leaves, and green would become the rose-cheeked beauty too. The pen-name couplet carries the green to death: when Ca'fer has become dust through longing for the down, green will grow on his grave as well. The grass covering the grave is the sign of a passion that goes on after death. In the Hâlet Efendi and Ayasofya copies the down of the last couplet turns into the cheek: Erünsal's thesis gives "ruḫuñla" (with your cheek) there for "ḫaṭṭuñla" (with your down). The Paris copy reverses two words in the fourth couplet, "yaşarup ḫoş" for "ḫoş yaşarup". Nazmî's collection has no room for this green ghazal.

Bibliography

Online sources