Cem Sultan

He was the younger son of the Mehemmed II. Upon his father’s death in 1481, Cem Sultan revolted unsuccessfully against his older brother Bayezid II and was forced to flee the country. He went to Rhodes, where he stayed with the Pope, and later he was saved by Charles VIII of France. He did not live much longer in this exile, since he had become the object of political games. After his death in 1495 in St. Germain, France, his body was brought to Bursa and buried there. Cem Sultan has a special place in the classical period of Ottoman poetry, for he mirrored his life in his poems. POETRY: Divan (Turkish), DivanCemşid u Hurşid (translation of Cemşid u Hurşid by the Persian poet Selman). (Persian). OTHER WORKS:

  THE ROSE-STEM ROUSES NO PASSION

The rose-stem rouses no passion

Like your body's slender grace

Blooms no rose in bowers of Paradise

Like the rose of your face

The ring of your curl

Took your lip's tiny mole into its embrace

As though an infant Jesus

Lay in Mary's arms

 

The image of your lip, your eyes

Have ruined my eye

That drunk and senseless lies

Wine in its goblet dancing,

If I watch your beauty

May your eye not rage,

Even a king's decree

Cannot forbid this to eyes

 

Any wonder the world is filled

With scents of roasting meats

Today my heart is grilled                                                                                                         

On the hearth of torment

 

Your glance strung

The bow of your brow,

Concealed its arrow

And lies in wait,

Nearby, another, like a gazelle,

Nestles heedless in its bed

 

A rim of tiny hairs

Rings your lip,

What heavenly stream this

Whose banks are ever grown with hyacinth

 

Though they had dug my grave

The fountain of life

Would yet flow for me, Oh Jem,

Were I to kiss her lips

                That Jesus-breath,

                                Stealer-of-hearts

 

Translated by Walter G. Andrews

 

[From An Anthology of Turkish literature, Edited by Kemal Silay]