Ghalib: Selected Poems and Letters

13. Hali 1897:112. The wonderful “eggs of buffaloes” translation is taken from Russell and Islam 1969:40. Ghalib’s verse is (175, 6) in the standard divan numbering system.

14. For an inventory of this commentarial literature, see Ansarullah 1972.

15. Ghazal 124 in the divan.

16. For details of Urdu prosody, see Pybus 1924.

17. See for an example (5, 8).

20. This verse is not contained in this translation. It can be found with the standard divan number (78, 2).

25. Ghalib did not choose to include all his verses in his published divan; these unpublished verses are almost entirely very early (ca.1816 to ca.1821).

1. A poet’s divan, or book of poetry, is expected to begin with a ḥamd, a verse in praise of God. Instead, this verse with its faux-naïf question suggests a legal complaint against divine carelessness and indifference. The word for lines of writing (taḥrīr) can also mean “setting at liberty, manumission”—a sense that ironically comes into play, since the figures in a picture may look free but in fact are powerless. The verse is full of wordplay involving terms for writing and drawing: naqsh (drawing, portrait), taḥrīr (writing); kāghaẕī (of paper), paikar (face, form, figure), taṣvīr (picture, image). For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1; he explains what he means by “paper robes.”

2. The “tough layers” stands in for sakht-jānīhā—literally, “tough-lifednesses” (which sounds just as strange in Urdu as it does in English). The sense is of something shamelessly resilient and primitively unkillable. Farhad carved through black (nightlike) stone to bring milk (white like the light of dawn) for his beloved Shirin’s bath. The task was never completed but ended in his death.

3. Is this ardor the sword’s own innate violence, or the beloved’s murderousness (which she has transmitted to the sword), or the lover’s death wish (which he has projected onto the sword)? The multivalence of dam is perfectly exploited: it means “breath” (the sword is panting with eagerness, perhaps almost dying of it) and “the edge of a sword” (which is in any case the “outside” part of the blade).

4. The imagined bird, the Anqa, is by definition uncapturable (by the bird trapper of awareness, with the net of hearing). Idiomatically, to call something an Anqa is also to suggest that it is nothing at all. The second line could also be translated as “the Anqa is the object of its own world of speech.”

5. Mad lovers, like the speaker, are chained up; but here the lover’s passion melts his chains.

1. Qais (or Majnun) ran off into the wide emptiness of the desert, a natural field (literally, “face”) of action for mad lovers. The desert was perhaps possessive, “narrowing” itself like a jealous eye and refusing to admit anyone else. The versatile magar, here translated as “perhaps,” can also mean “but,” which would create another reading: “No one else came, but still the desert was jealous.”

2. This enigmatic verse raises questions of Sufistic terminology. In the ghazal world, smoke can be the result of fiery sighs—and it either affixes, or enhances, or erases this suvaidā, the “black spot” that is the essence of desire.

3. The lover’s lessons are in Persian—and he learns only a few very melancholy past-tense verb forms.

4. In a striking example of multivalence, the word nang, here translated as “disgrace,” can also mean “honor.”

5. Kohkan (“Mountain Digger,” an epithet of Farhad’s) killed himself with an axe; the verse suggests that if he had been less conventional, he wouldn’t even have needed one. “Asad” was a pen name that Ghalib used in some of his earlier ghazals.

6. This and the following verses are among those omitted by Ghalib from his published divan. A “city of the silent” is a cemetery. The complex possibilities of the iẓāfat mean that gharīb-i could be translated as “stranger in,” “stranger to,” or “stranger from.”

7. The description of the sky evokes its (eyelike) spherical shape. Is the azure eye that of the sky, or that of some still more potent power? Or does it suggest that the speaker was destroyed not by cruelty but by beauty?

1. To avoid blaming the beloved “enemy,” the lover blames his own heart for his failure to obtain access to her.

2. The beloved (beauty) is testing the courage of the speaker (the lover) through a show of heedlessness and obliviousness. Is she “artfully” testing his “simplicity” and “awarely” testing his rapturous “self-lessness” (that is, self-transcendence)? Or is she “artful” through her show of “simplicity” (or “simple” through her naive faith in her “artfulness”), while he is “aware” despite his “self-lessness”? Or do all four qualities belong to him (since the first and third are innately his, while the second and fourth show his discovery of her trickery in “testing” him)? Or does the first line simply marvel at those contrasting qualities, without necessarily assigning them to anyone in particular? And so on, unresolvably.

3. Is the lover’s heart metaphorically a bud (renewed every spring, doomed to a quick blossoming and death)? Or is the bud metaphorically the lover’s lost heart, which he imagines he has (briefly) recovered? Since to cause something to “turn to blood” (khūn karnā) means either “to murder” or “to squander” it, the interpretive possibilities of the second line become still more ramified.

4. In the perverse world of the ghazal, where nothing is more pleasurable than pain, it is quite possible that the lover is asking not sarcastically or resentfully but gratefully, whether the Adviser enjoyed the salt-in-wound experience as much as he himself did (“Was it good for you too?”).

5. This verse about a single step or print of the foot (pā) ends with two adjacent occurrences of “foot” (pā pāyā).

6. This and the following verses are among those omitted by Ghalib from his published divan. The second line presents the baroque, powerfully ominous image of a semipersonified “despair” that smiles through two lips that are (like) the two worlds. Despair is vast and cosmically powerful, the very opposite of poor hope with its childish dust castles.

7. For the liver to turn to blood is, idiomatically, to suffer and torment oneself. More literally, the process creates a river or channel of brilliant redness—and thus evokes, or invites inside, or permits the lover to reach out to the brilliantly red rose, perpetual emblem of the (human or divine) beloved. The iẓāfat construction in “offers a road to the rose” conveys, as it does in English, the possibility of traffic in either or both directions. “Heart opening” (dil-kushā) commonly means “heart expanding” or “delightful.” We tend to read it that way; there’s a sudden enjoyable shock in realizing how literally a sword wound can be “heart opening” and how many mystical, Sufistic associations the idea carries in its train.

1. A niche in the wall is normally used to display cherished possessions; here, the “niche of forgetfulness” suggests total indifference, for indeed we who are self-less, mystically beside ourselves, can’t be bothered with such trivia as the Garden of Rizvan. It is merely a “single” (one among many) “bouquet” (compared with the vast fields over which we wander). The grammar of the first line makes it possible that what is tossed aside so disdainfully is not the real Garden of Rizvan but only the Ascetic’s idea of it.

2. The lover’s drops of blood are pierced by the beloved’s eyelashes so that they resemble (red) coral “beads” with “strings” through them, like prayer beads with which to worship her. Here dāna means both “bead” and “seed”; coral was imagined as a mineral that could undergo plantlike growth.

3. The lover’s laments are so potent and uncontrollable that even the straw that he takes in his teeth (to show utter submission) becomes a reed, from which reed flutes are made.

4. A “tree of lights” is a form of fancy lamp-show—of oil lamps, of course, so that their flames can evoke the mortally burning wounds in the lover’s heart.

5. A “mirror chamber” was a windowless inner room with walls covered with small glittery and mirrored tiles, so that a torch could create a sudden dazzle. The beloved’s glory might actually melt the mirrors, the way a ray of sun vaporizes dew.

6. Just as in English, “my construction” can refer either to construction done by me or to the construction of my own self. The little word “one” (ek) can have a wide range of meanings, including “single,” “particular,” “unique,” “excellent.”

7. The lover’s house is such a ruin that weeds have taken root and grown up in it. The Doorkeeper now makes his living cutting and selling the tall weeds and grass as fodder. Who is the visitor to whom the lover is paradoxically showing off his allegedly unvisited house?

8. This is a verse chiefly of wordplay. A burnt-out lamp is, literally, a “dead” lamp, and since its oil is gone, it no longer has a “tongue” of flame with which to express its longings. Lamps are often lit on graves, and the grave of a poor man (or a “stranger”) would be likely to receive little attention.

9. Joseph’s father, Jacob, so loved him that somehow his tear-blinded eyes were able to see into Joseph’s Egyptian prison cell. That lingering “ray” is at a double remove, since it is not a ray of light or of the beloved’s own radiance; it is only a mental ray, of the “image,” of the “thought,” of the beloved.

10. The second line relies on bookmaking terminology: the binding string is used to sew together the set of folded signatures that make up the book. The word pareshān means, literally, “scattered, dispersed,” but metaphorically it commonly means “distracted, anxious,” which also works well here. The first line offers up long, thin, binding string–like things: both a “path” and a “road” to oblivion. The brilliance of Ghalib shows with “in our gaze,” since after hearing the second line we suddenly realize that the gaze too traces out a long, straight trajectory that could be another stringlike presence. Does the verse suggest that only the human gaze makes meaning out of the dispersed, inchoate world? Or does it suggest that only a gaze fixed on oblivion can create any unity or coherence in one’s life?

1. The use of baskih means that the first line might also begin, “It’s quite sufficiently difficult.” To be a “man” (ādmī) is to be a mere descendant of Adam; to be a human (insān) suggests urbanity, empathy, and ethical behavior.

2. Literally, what “drips” from the doors and walls is “to be a desert” (bayābān honā), which is just as strikingly paradoxical an image in Urdu as it is in English.

3. The tiny lines left on a metal mirror when it’s polished resemble eyelashes; the radiant appearance of the beloved causes the mirror to aspire to be an eye.

4. The scimitar has the crescent shape of the new moon that signals the festive start of Eid and is equally delightful to the “people of longing” who have been awaiting the death stroke that will bring them mystical union with the divine.

5. In Urdu one “eats” (khānā) a wound, so that the imagery of food is extended, and with it the delights of masochism.

6. The second line is exclamatory—but in what mood, what tone of voice?

7. In the first line the word qismat turns out to refer to the “cutting out” of fabric to make a garment, though the reader realizes this only after encountering the same word in its more common sense of “destiny” in the second line. The collar of the mad lover’s kurta is fated to be constantly ripped open.

1. In the ghazal world the liver makes fresh blood, so an arrow shot through the liver (as opposed to the heart) would finish off the victim at once. Is the lover complaining about the extra pain of a slow death, or delighting in it?

2. The symmetry of Urdu grammar means that the latter half of the first line can also be read as “that the Adviser has become a friend.” The lover’s friends, alarmed at his condition, have begun to lecture him just the way the Adviser does; or, the Adviser himself has struck up a “friendship” with the lover. Either way, the lover no longer has any support.

3. In Urdu as in English, rocks have “veins”; thus they can bleed. When one strikes a person, blood comes out, and when one strikes a rock, a spark appears; thus sparks are the rock’s “blood.”

4. The final clause can be read to suggest either that dying never happened at all (death was longed for but never appeared) or that dying happened over and over (the night of grief was a kind of endless death).

5. Against strong Muslim traditions, the dead lover wishes he had died at sea, so that his funeral procession and tomb would not recall his disgraceful behavior.

6. The wordplay moves from “oneness” through “unique” through “twoness” to the idiomatic word for an “encounter,” which is, literally, “two-four-ness” (do-chār honā). In this case, unusually, it is clear that the beloved is God.

1. Is the excuse being made by the longing of the heart to the lover, or to the longing of the heart by the lover? Does the speaker remember the liver with longing and regret because he can’t lament anymore now that it’s gone? Or does he start to lament and then remember about the (loss of the) liver and offer an “excuse” instead?

2. The first line is idiomatic and exclamatory (inshāʾiya). It may be a compliment to the desert (it is almost as desolate as my house), or an insult to the desert (it is not nearly as desolate as my house). Or it may be a compliment to the house (it is at least as desolate as the desert). The first line may also be read as a question (Is there any desolation that really is a desolation?); in this case it is an insult to the desert (it is no more desolate than my house) and perhaps to the house as well (it’s not nearly desolate enough to suit me).

3. In the ghazal world, village boys taunt madmen—including mad lovers like Majnun—and throw stones at them. At the last moment the future lover realizes the similar risk to his own head in later life. To “keep one’s head” is, literally, to “remember one’s head” (sar yād ānā), to come to one’s senses.

1. In humid weather metal mirrors acquire a film of verdigris, which must be polished away. The polishing process is imagined as painful to the mirror and thus proves its devotion to clarity of sight.

1. The word for “whirlpool” is, literally, “four-wave,” a kind of multivalence that is directly invoked by the four waves named in the second line.

1. This ghazal plays on its refrain word aur, which can mean either “additional” (more of the same) or “different” (something else).

2. There will be plenty of such goods on sale cheap in the bazaar, because the beloved will have wrecked the hearts and lives of many other lovers as well. But of course, the prostrate lover may never manage to get up at all.

3. Only on a second reading do we realize that “as long as we live” is precisely informative—that the emphasis falls on “we,” since we ourselves are the final heavy stone.

4. Here the ghazal’s opposition between the blood-expending heart and the blood-creating liver is hyperbolically invoked.

5. Perhaps there is no such thing as the “world-warming sun” at all, and my daily revelation of a fresh wound is all the heat and light there is in the world.

1. Is the deceit done through, or to, simpleheartedness? Does the lover’s show of dignity (try to) fool others, or himself?

2. Does he really, or is the bird’s claim one of desperation?

3. There’s a (romantic?) game called “the rose game” (gul-bāzī) that involves playing catch with flowers; in Persian a gul-bāz is a connoisseur of roses. Whose eyelashes—the beloved’s deadly-weapon ones, or the lover’s own blood-dripping ones—have been playing with such roses?

1. Lightning is often a cause of grief (it burns up the harvest). Thus it may here be both the cause of grief and the cure for it, if we take the lightning-flash candle as marking the end of the darkness of mourning.

2. Does the personified, fatally disruptive “cardplayer of thought” live in our own minds, or—even more ominously—somewhere outside us?

3. This and the following verse are among those omitted by Ghalib from his published divan.

4. The multivalent word nang can mean both “disgrace” and “honor.”

1. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

2. Usually the “friend” is the “beloved,” while the “enemy” would be a rival in love. Here, the rule might be reversed.

3. How extremely angry she must be to wrinkle her brow so deeply that it actually visibly wrinkles her veil. And how extremely attentive (or paranoid) the lover must be to have noticed it.

4. For discussion of this verse, see the introduction.

5. Between them, these two possibilities cover a very high percentage of Indian weather.

1. That is, we should fear neither a lack of inventory tomorrow nor excessive punishment after death; the “Cupbearer of Kausar,” Hazrat Ali, will pour out wine generously in this world and the next.

2. The Angel called Iblis, in Qur’an 2:30–34, refused to bow down to the newly created Adam and was punished by expulsion from Paradise.

3. A mischievous faux-naïf contribution to the arguments in Ghalib’s day about the legitimacy of using music as a means to spiritual insight.

4. Another mischievous faux-naïf question but addressed to a common kind of Sufistic discourse involving Arabic grammatical forms and metaphysical questions.

5. The first line’s bū (scent) is echoed in the second line’s bū (part of “Bu Turab,” an epithet for Ali).

1. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1. The first line could also be read as a statement, “I am not always lying at your door.” Is the speaker complaining of ill-treatment (since he is not made of stone), or wishing he could be a stone (so that he could lie at the beloved’s door forever)? “Dust be upon” is an idiomatic malediction and also wordplay with “stone.” In this ghazal the refrain “I am not” can be fairly well preserved in translation

2. The “circling” is that of the days and nights, or of the cycles of fortune. By contrast, the wineglass and flagon find it natural to “make the rounds” among the drinkers.

3. Touching one’s face to the feet of a superior is a classic gesture of submissiveness.

1. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1. In the second line, “faces” (ṣūraten) can also mean, more abstractly, “aspects” or “prospects.” And is the “hiddenness” temporary and contingent (like that of flowers that may someday grow again), or irrevocable and essential? Thanks to the kyā effect, the second line can also be read in a number of other ways, including, “Will there be faces?” and “What faces will there be?”

2. “The Daughters of the Bier” is the constellation Ursa Major.

3. Jacob is said to have wept so much for Joseph that he went blind; by ghazal convention, this means that his eyes became entirely white. Thus they resembled the look of the bright sky through the ventilation holes near the ceiling of Joseph’s dark prison cell.

4. The story is that when Zulaikha’s friends sneered at her love for her slave boy Joseph (known as the “Moon of Canaan” for his beauty), she invited them over, served oranges, and gave out knives to cut them with. Then she called Joseph in, and the dazzled women, staring at him, delighted Zulaikha by beginning to cut their own fingers without realizing it.

5. The word pareshān (disheveled, disarranged) more commonly in Urdu means, metaphorically, “anxious, agitated,” which perfectly captures the desperate jealousy of the lover as he imagines how the Rival has everything that he himself does not.

6. The mad lover rips open his collar, and here he imagines his sighs, repeatedly welling up and then being suppressed, as having the (parodic?) effect of sewing.

1. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

2. The colloquial interjections and rakish tone of this verse make it sound swaggering as the rash lover responds to the Adviser’s prudential warnings.

1. The “like this” (kih yūn) of the refrain makes the mouth pucker when it is said. It can be either a direct quotation (from the lover or the beloved) or a general adverbial phrase. In most of the verses of the ghazal the same flexibility has been created.

2. The sound of yūn could almost be the moan of the wind blowing. Is the wind helping the lover out, or is it itself a sign of Sufistic transcendence?

3. The footprint is an image of amazement because it lies flat in the dust, unmoving, and has the shape of an open mouth.

1. I lament and scream so constantly, and she is so indifferent, that she notices the silence only if I stop—which is enough to make me scream.

1. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

2. The beautiful ones are tall, so the choice pearl (star) in their collar is high up; also, the fortune (star) of the pearl seller is thus at its zenith.

3. This verse is the beginning of a very famous verse set that includes verses 6–12.

4. The “unseen” can be a divine or mystical realm, or else simply an unknown space or a reference to the future. The second line can be read either piously (my verses come directly from the Angels) or else cynically (my verses are the only “angel voices” that exist).

1. The refrain of this ghazal, “is good” (sometimes comparativized into “is better”), has been more or less preserved.

2. The verse carefully does not tell us whose pleasure is increased, or for whom (the giver or the receiver) such a beggar is “good.”

3. Beloveds are conventionally “idols,” so it is piquant that a Brahmin astrologer might be taken as an authority on their behavior.

4. The axe enabled the skillful stone carver Farhad to kill himself when he was (falsely) told of his beloved Shirin’s death. Thus the second line’s virtuous truism is ironized before we even hear it. Or is it? Did Farhad not in fact “speak with” Shirin better through his death than through his life?

5. This verse celebrates the birth of a son to Ghalib’s royal patron. The boy was named Khizr Sultan, and the wordplay of “flourishing”—literally, “green headed”—further evokes the legendary figure of Khizr.

1. The idiomatic intransitive bāt bannā means not only “for something to get done” but also “for conversation to take place” and “for excuses to be made.” The second half of the line uses the transitive form bāt banānā, for an effect of colloquial complexity. Similarly paradoxical idiomatic forms are used in other verses of this ghazal as well.

2. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

1. In this ghazal it has been possible to preserve the refrain mire āge, which means “before me” in a literal sense and also something like “in my view.” The first four verses also display a marked parallelism and a cumulative effect of increasing tongue-in-cheek pretentiousness.

1. The refrain word here, “became,” has been preserved in all the verses.

2. If he had been shrewd earlier, would he still have wandered? Did he wander on purpose to become shrewd? Did the notoriety contribute to the shrewdness?

3. But perhaps that was what the lover wanted anyway.

4. Did she pick it up so tenderly that the enemies were envious, or so disdainfully that they feared for their own fate?

1. “From end to end” is, literally, “from head to head,” making for fine wordplay with Majnun’s mad head and Laila’s headful of curls. Is the speaker expressing annoyance at Majnun’s mad obsession with Laila’s curls, or is he suggesting that no one will think of them because they are invisible in a dust cloud?

2. Does the weeping open the knot, or does the speaker weep because nothing will open the knot?

3. The “disgrace” (rusvā karnā) has a sense of public humiliation, giving it a secondary meaning of “to open, reveal” that resonates elegantly with the “opening up” of both the liver and the road in the first line. Anybody else would start by tearing his collar, and only later consider tearing up his liver. Who but a mad lover would begin with the liver, then stop and reflect before moving on to “disgrace” his collar?

4. The first line seems to show that with the fertilizer provided by the liver fragments, the desert gardening was a success. So, does the question in the second line express annoyance, boredom, or genuine inquiry?

5. In the ghazal world, stones and bricks are thrown at madmen by jeering boys. The commercial wordplay is enhanced by the secondary meaning of saudā: it can be not only “business” but also “madness.”

6. The latter clause in the second line is framed for maximum ambiguity; other possible readings include “that no one would create” and “that—may no one create it!”

7. This and the following verse are among those omitted by Ghalib from his published divan.

1. The second line plays on the protean verb nikalnā, which can be used to mean “to emerge” (1) from nonexistence into existence, (2) from silence into speech, (3) from hope into fulfillment, (4) from obscurity into clarity, (5) from a dwelling, for departure.

2. The comic energy of the verse comes from the dismissal of Adam’s tired old minor humiliation, which is of interest only as a contrast to our own much fresher and more vivid disgrace.

1. The dark mark in the heart of the tulip is considered to be a “wound” or “scar.” The second line may thus be either praising the tulip (for the dew tears of pity that it sheds) or else reproaching it (for its mere show of fake “tears”). Since the verse has two independently meaningful lines, it is also possible that two different hearts are being described.

2. This is a difficult and multivalent verse. One possible reading is that hearts are mirrors, so the lover’s heart-mirror, pulverized by longing, is like the decorative henna that the beloved, intoxicated with her own beauty, applies to her hand.

3. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

4. Does the verse suggest that real passion is a form of duress (like a hand trapped under a stone), or that claims of love are mere verbiage (so that the only way to be sure of a lover’s faithfulness is to pinion his hand)?

5. Just before the lover’s head is cut off, as the shining sword blade approaches him he sees reflected in it images that show him the fate of former martyrs to love. Does he really see “pictures” of them, or does his own reflected image simply replicate their fate?

6. When one is really scraping the bottom of the barrel, the Lord may be better than nothing.

1. The refrain of this ghazal is “having done,” which contributes to its nostalgic tone, a tone that resonates with the presence of “again” in almost every verse.

2. The beloved’s eyelashes presumably enjoy piercing the liver fragments as if they were kebabs.

3. The lover’s head will be lowered as he weeps his tears of blood, so that the droplets will form patterns on the hem of his long robe.

4. Circumambulation is a way of showing (Muslim or Hindu) religious devotion.

1. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

2. “She went back” either into her house or on her word—so fast that the only thing equally rapid was my unrolling my bedding by her door.

3. If Majnun’s house has no door, does that mean that Laila cannot enter it, or that she cannot be stopped from entering it?

4. Both halves of the impossible juxtaposition in the first line are supported in the second line: we dash around so swiftly that we outrun even the deer (so that its eyelashes brush our back as it follows us), and yet we are as helpless as Majnun in the desert, so that the wild animals care for us.

5. For discussion of this verse, see the introduction.

6. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

7. A “man of ours” would be an agent or advocate, whose presence would be necessary for a legitimate legal transaction.

8. The compliment to Mir is thoroughly backhanded: the famous poet is reduced to a mere legend of long ago, and even his existence is rendered uncertain. In fact, the two poets’ life spans overlapped by thirteen years.

9. In Indic and Islamic folk tradition, pearls are born from special drops of rain that navigate a series of hazards before reaching the seabed and being sucked in by an oyster.

10. In Urdu script, udhar (in that direction) and idhar (in this direction) are indistinguishable: is the speaker outside the heavens looking in, or inside looking out?

11. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

12. The (smooth) sacred thread is a mark of the Brahmin, and the (bumpy) prayer beads are characteristic of a pious Muslim.

13. The letters lām and alif are part of the earliest writing lessons; lā is also a form of negation that appears at the beginning of the Muslim profession of faith (“There is no God but God”).

14. The second line can be read as either “Don’t ask for anything except a heart without desire” or “Don’t ask for anything unless you have a heart without desire.”

15. The Qibla is of course already a “Mecca pointer” since it shows the direction of prayer. To call it a “Mecca-pointer pointer” seems to move the object of worship one step further beyond our reach.

16. The first line leads us to expect something apologetic; then, most enjoyably, the second line turns the verse into a boast. With beautiful wordplay, “cheerfulness in adversity” is fāqa-mastī—literally, “fasting intoxication.”

17. Why is he not disappointed? Is it because he gets gifts of wine year-round, not just on Eid (though Eid gifts should certainly not include wine)?

18. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

19. The word lāg (affection, attachment) can also mean “enmity, animosity”; the theological possibilities are thus multiplied into unresolvable ambiguity.

20. The phrase “Supplier of Needs” could also be read not as addressing God but as describing the eye. The arched gateway and prayer niche (qiblah) of the mosque suggest the shape of an eyebrow.

21. For discussion of this verse, see the introduction.

22. The net is the kind used by hunters to trap wild animals. A single one of the round interstices in its mesh would contain the whole round world.

23. Thanks to the symmetry of Urdu grammar, the second line could also be read, “A doormat is a desertful of rose-glory.” But of course, to measure the glory of roses in “desertfuls” means there really may not be much of it at all.

24. The last phrase could also be read as “the sun is lightning,” with the implication that the pain of life seems never to end; this second reading can take advantage of the fact that “year” (sāl) also means “pain.”

25. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

26. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

27. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

28. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

29. The unstated subject in the first line might also be “we,” in which case the verb would suggest “give up.” What in the first line is the “intoxication,” and what the “hangover”?

30. The first line describes a very impious and sinful action; does the second line describe another such (treating Zamzam as merely a source of wash water), or is it an (absurdly inadequate) attempt at better behavior?

31. The “people of courage” would perhaps consume or expend the resources of the world in the process of moving beyond it. But that second line keeps teasing the imagination with further metaphorical possibilities.

32. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

33. It is equally possible to read “union is separation.”

34. If you ostentatiously ignore us (with wordplay from “veil”), people will think you are hiding a secret fondness. So why not show your face openly (in friendship, or in disdain)?

35. The second line can also be read as “How you will complain…!” or else as “As if you will complain…!” The wordplay of “Lord” (khudā) and “captain” (nā-khudā) is also conspicuous.

36. In Islamic tradition, Ali is called the Cupbearer of Kausar.

37. The turtledove is dusty gray in color, and its song is melancholy.

38. The second line can also be read, “A handful of dust in our eyes is a desert.”

39. “Circumambulation,” walking respectfully around the Ka’ba, is a required part of a pilgrimage to Mecca. The speaker may mean that he has sinned by drinking wine, so that he will earn no religious merit; or else that he has already had enough wine, so there is no point in seeking anything further.

40. This is the last verse of the last ghazal in the published divan.

1. This and the following seven verses are among those omitted by Ghalib from his published divan.

2. This and the following six verses constitute a verse set.

1. For Ghalib’s comments, see appendix 1.

2. The actual reference is to the letter qāf in tiryāq (opium), which looks like the letter o with a tail.

3. The down on the cheeks of a boy just reaching puberty was often compared to greenery.

4. The “black spot” (suvaidā) is the essence of desire.

1. This and the following three verses constitute a verse set.

2. This and the last fourteen verses constitute a verse set praising the martial prowess and royal authority of the poet’s king and patron, Bahadur Shah (r. 1837–1857).

1. It is proper for a host to come forward to welcome and escort an arriving guest; the “lifetime” has entertained the speaker properly before, but now by retreating and passing away it shows neglect. The word istiqbāl means both “welcome” and “the future.”

1. In Urdu and Persian “to speak” can mean “to compose poetry.”

2. The last line is in Persian. By a slight rearrangement of the spacing, o gar na could be converted into “otherwise” (vagarna), which would yield the reading “I speak the difficult; otherwise I speak the difficult.”

1. Dated ca. June or July 1858 and addressed to his pupil and friend Hargopal Tafta.

2. Dated April 4, 1859, and addressed to his friend Hatim Ali Mihr.

3. The first verse is the same Persian verse of Ghalib’s that he cited in the 1858 letter to Tafta; here, the wordplay on Mihr’s name, meaning “kindness,” adds to its suitability.