S. R. Faruqi:

The interpretation of jin ke ḳhūñ se is not only blood flowing on the ground; rather, ḳhūñ can also mean 'murder'. That is, when you murdered me, then because of this your street became entirely a rose-garden. If in place of 'rose' [gul] we read 'mud, clay' [gil], then the interpretation becomes that my blood has flowed to such an extent that your street has filled up with mud [khichṛī]. This interpretation is supported by sān kar in the second line.

In any case, the theme of the verse is the lover's dignity and his longing for distinction. He is ready to die-- or rather, dies most happily-- but he doesn't consent that his corpse would be trampled and ground down along with others. In this theme there's a strange and extraordinary ironic tension. Death is acceptable, and it's obvious that the meaning of death is that union was not vouchsafed; thus perpetual separation too is acceptable. And this death and perpetual separation is the fate of other lovers as well. Thus to die a collective death too is acceptable.

That is, as long as he would remain alive, all that treatment is acceptable that the beloved would impose on him and others. But after dying, he has not accepted this dishonor to his corpse-- that he would be given a place among the corpses of others. It's possible that this theme might have remained very close to Mir's heart, because he used it in various ways as long as he lived. In the first divan [{591,6}]:

loṭe hai ḳhāk-o-ḳhūn meñ ġhairoñ ke sāth mīr
aise to nīm-kushtah ko un meñ nah sāniye

[Mir writhes in dust and blood with Others
please don't mix in such a half-slain one with them!]

From the second divan [{815,8}]:

rakhnā thā vaqt-e qatl mirā imtiyāz hāʾe
so ḳhāk meñ milāyā mujhe sab meñ sān kar

[she ought to have retained my distinction at the time of murder, alas
thus she put me down into the dust, mixing me in with them all]

From the second divan:

{977,5}.

From the sixth divan [{1898,7}]:

āge bichhā ke nit̤ʿa ko lāte the teġh-o-t̤asht
karte the yaʿnī ḳhūn to ik imtiyāz se

[having spread out the leather-dropcloth beforehand, they brought the sword and basin
that is, they did the murder with a singular distinction]

From the sixth divan [{1904,5}]:

sān mārā aur kushtoñ meñ mire kushte ko bhī
us kushandah laṛke ne be-imtiyāzī ḳhūb kī

[he killed us among other slain ones-- even my slaughter
that murderous boy did with a fine lack of distinction!]

The word sān'nā is very powerful and effective. but it's possible that to some 'delicate' temperaments it might seem cumbersome. It can be seen in Yaganah's poetry too:

mirā pāʾoñ phislā to parvā nahīñ
magar tum mire sāth nā-ḥaq sane

[if my foot slipped, then I don't care
but you were mixed up improperly with me]

See also

{1337,2}.

Janab Abd ur-Rashid has presented a number of examples of sān'nā , among which some are extremely excellent. For example, from Sauda:

maʿmūr hai jis roz se vīrānah-e dunyā
har jins ke insān kī māṭī gaʾī sānī

[from the day the desolation of the world became inhabited,
the dust of every kind of human has been mixed]

Abd ur-Rashid also copied down, through Ahmad Mahfuz, this verse of Riyaz Khairabadi's:

teġh hī kyā hāth meñ qātil ke thī
ai ḥinā tū bhī to sāʾī jāʾegī

[what a sword there was in the murderer's hand!
oh henna, even/also you will be mixed in]

Since I've seen this verse in the riyāẓ-e riẓvāñ , it occurs to me that it's possible that Riyaz's verse too might have been before Yaganah's eyes.

FWP:

SETS == DOUBLE ACTIVATION
MOTIFS == GRANDIOSITY; SCRIPT EFFECTS
NAMES
TERMS == THEME

Has the lover's blood made the beloved's street into 'roses' [gul], or 'mud' [gil]? The two words of course look identical, in the diacritic-free form in which they're usually written in Urdu. The evidence is beautifully balanced. In favor of roses is the red color, the radiance, the traditional ghazal-world tribute of passion to beauty. In favor of 'earth, mud, clay' is the 'mash, mix up' physicality of sān'nā , and the sense of ḳharāb as 'polluted, contaminated' (see the definitions above). Mir has almost required our minds to go back and forth between the two very viable possibilities.

For further discussion of Mir's repeatedly expressed, almost obsessive hatred for any kind of 'mixing' of himself with others, see especially

{977,5}.

Also, in the second line should we read tū or to ? the former works well with the tone, and with the tirī in the first line. But the fact that it's scanned as a short syllable gives me pause. It feels and sounds much better to shorten to than to shorten tū . In terms of meaning, it hardly seems to make much difference.

Note for script fans: The spelling ve instead of vuh seems to be meant to emphasize the long syllable that it here represents, and also its pluralization.