Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Nice aylar geçer bir gün kadem rencîde kılmazsın
Koya ey afitâbım zerrece hiç hâl bilmezsin
Varayın zahm-ı sînen dikeyin dimişdin ey hûnî
Beni gördükce ok gibi geçersin hiç ilmezsin
Tekellüfsüz girîbân çâk-ı ağyâra sevilirken
Benim yanımda ey gonce-dehen niçün açılmazsın

In English

1. Many months go by and not for a single day do you trouble your foot to come. O my sun, you know nothing at all of the state of the mote. (The word "Koya" stands thus in the source; read as "kûya", to the street, the line could also mean "you never come out to the street to ask after me even a little".)

2. O bloodthirsty one, you had said, "Let me come and stitch the wound in your breast"; yet whenever you see me you pass by like an arrow and never stop.

3. While you let yourself be loved by the rivals without ceremony, your collar open, why, O rosebud-mouthed one, do you not open up beside me? (The line is obscure; the meaning has been inferred from the context.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

The lover's reproach in this ghazal is woven from negative verbs: "kılmazsın, bilmezsin, ilmezsin, açılmazsın", you do not trouble, you do not know, you do not stop, you do not open. The lover complains of a beloved who does not come, does not ask after him, does not call and does not open up to him. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar quotes the ghazal from Kâfzâde Fâizî immediately after the previous one with the words "this too is his". There is no pen-name couplet.

In the first couplet "kadem rencîde kılmak", to put one's foot to trouble, is a polite way of saying to pay someone a visit. The beloved is the sun and the lover the mote; in divan poetry the speck of dust seen in a sunbeam is held to be in love with the sun. The word "Koya" stands thus in the source and does not fit the line well; reading it as "kûya", to the street, could mend the sense, but this is a suggested reading. The second couplet recalls a promise the beloved once made: to come and stitch the wound in the lover's breast. Yet now, whenever the beloved sees the lover, she passes by like an arrow. The word "arrow" hints that the wound too was opened by her glance; "ilmek" in old Turkish means to stop by a place, to linger.

The last couplet rests on the familiar image that joins the rosebud with the mouth. The bud does not open, and the beloved's mouth does not smile on the lover. The first line, however, is obscure. "Girîbân-çâk" means with a torn collar and usually describes the lover's state; its use here together with the rivals makes the line difficult. The rendering follows the contrast that the beloved opens herself freely to the rivals but stays closed to the lover; another reading is possible. The story of the poet who, failing to become a professor, withdrew into an imam's post is on the page Ümîdî Receb Efendi of Merzifon.

Bibliography

Online sources