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S. R. Faruqi:
He has composed this theme in other places as well. In the first divan [{480,3}]:
us shoḳh kī sar-tez palak haiñ kih vuh kāñṭā
gaṛ jāʾe agar āñkh meñ sar dil se nikāle[that mischievous one has sharp eyelashes, such if that thorn
would lodge in the eye, then it would thrust its head/tip out through the heart]From the second divan [{937,7}]:
ḳhāt̤ir nah jamʿa rakkho un palkoñ kī ḳhalish se
sar dil se kāṛhte haiñ yāñ ḳhār raftah raftah[don't be complacent about the scratching of those eyelashes!
they dig out their heads from the heart, here, by degrees]But in the present verse, the excellence is that he's turned three kinds of thorns into one. The first is the usual thorn in the heart, the second is the beloved's eyelashes, and the third is the thorn of the desert of love. Both the other verses cited above are devoid of any mention of the third thorn. And the greatest pleasure is in the fact that the natural and original thorn of the desert of love pricks in the foot-sole, then takes on an immaterial and romantic reality and shows itself in the heart. The 'commonality' of qadam , dekh , dil , palak , shoḳh is also fine.
The word shoḳh is superb also because it suggests that the thorn of the path of love is some mischievous creature that will gradually advance until it reaches the heart, and will show itself in this aspect of the heart. By not mentioning the thorn in the first line, but referring to its thrusting its head out from the heart, he has created a superb 'suspense' [tajassus].
(It should be kept in mind that in our culture poetry was a thing for oral recitation. For the classical poets, the first principle of the style of reading/reciting was that the poetry would be assumed to be orally recited. In a written verse, the gaze can fall on both lines at the same time. But if the verse is being heard, then there's suspense about what the next line-- or rather, the next word-- will be. Thus in the present verse, having heard the first line, suspense arises. There can also be an idea as to whether it might be about a thorn-- and then when the idea is borne out, the enjoyment is redoubled.)
Jalal [Lakhnavi] has sought, on the strength of the idiom, to make this theme broader. But he hasn't had any special success:
jigar kī phāñsī hai mizhgān-e yār kī ulfat
jo dil meñ chubh ke nah nikleñ vuh ḳhār haiñ palkeñ[the strangling of the liver is the delight of the eyebrow of the beloved
those thorns that would pierce in the heart and not emerge-- they are the eyelashes]