Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

Biz bülbül-i bâġ-ı ‘aşḳ-ı elest
Vech-i bâḳî gülsitânı bekleriz
Şarâb-ı elestden bir nice mestiz
Baḥr-i dilden dil-feşânı bekleriz

In English

1. We are nightingales of the garden of the love of Elest; we wait for the rose garden of the everlasting Face (of God). We have long been drunk on the wine of Elest; we wait for the one who scatters (pearls) from the sea of the heart.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a koşma. The koşma is the most common verse form of minstrel poetry; it is built of quatrains and usually sung in an eleven-syllable metre. The lines have a caesura after 6+5 or 4+4+3 syllables; the syllable count is ours. Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the first quatrain of this poem. The first and third lines rhyme in "elest / mestiz", the second and fourth in "gülsitânı / dil-feşânı"; "bekleriz" is the refrain. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The quatrain is plainly a Sufi poem. "Elest" refers to the Qur'anic question "Elestü bi-rabbiküm" (Am I not your Lord?); according to Sufism, souls answered "yes" to this question before creation and have been in love with God ever since. "Şarâb-ı elest" is the intoxication of that first love. "Vech-i bâkî", the everlasting Face, recalls the Qur'anic phrase "the Face of your Lord remains". The poet counts himself and those like him as nightingales of this garden, waiting for the rose garden of divine beauty. The reading "dil-feşân" in the last line follows the article; it could also be read "dür-feşân" (pearl-scattering), which gives an image more consistent with the word "bahr" (sea).

Historical Context

The poem is recorded under the name of Tokatlı Nûrî in the Merzifon Cönkü introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019; with thirty-six poems, Nûrî is the poet the cönk gives most space to. Drawing on Orhan Bilgin, Hakverdioğlu relates that Eyüb Sabrî of Merzifon often invited Nûrî to Merzifon; Nûrî's weight in the cönk can be explained by this friendship. Since other minstrels also used the pen name Nûrî, it is not certain that every Nûrî poem in the cönk belongs to Tokatlı Nûrî; the article attributes these poems to Tokatlı Nûrî. For the poet's life and his connection with Amasya, see the page on Tokatlı Nûrî. The poem is on page 64 of the cönk and page 549 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.

Bibliography

Online sources