S. R. Faruqi:

It wouldn't be strange if Ghalib had obtained the difference between ādmī and insān from Mir:

G{17,1}.

Mir has composed this theme a second time [{1071,5}]:

mat sahl hameñ samjho pahuñche the baham tab ham
barsoñ taʾīñ gardūñ ne jab ḳhāk ko chhānā thā

[don't consider us simple-- we arrived at ourselves then
when for years the wheel/sky had 'sifted through the dust']

In the present verse the theme of insān is additional, and by implicitly calling himself an insān he has placed himself on the level of humaneness/humanity. For the wheel/sky to 'sift through the dust' is fine, but the affinity of phirnā with falak is very fine indeed.

For phirnā there are three meanings: 'to revolve' and 'to make one's rounds' and 'to wander about'; all these three are appropriate. In this way, by means of only one word Mir showed off the wonder of 'meaning-creation'. This theme too is superb: that the sphere above us revolves and revolves, and its effect can be seen below: that from the veil of dust a human is manifest. Since a human is made of dust, 'veil of dust' is even more appropriate.

Fundamentally, in the verse 'mood' is operative. The aspect of meaning is also present. But at first the attention doesn't turn toward it. In the first line the insha'iyah structure of 'don't consider us simple/easy' is full of 'mood', and all the rest of the words of the verse are of the same rank. Mir's skill is that he places the equipment of meaning even in such verses as apparently wouldn't have the possibility of meaning.

[See also {502,3}; {1054,10}.]

FWP:

SETS == GRANDIOSITY
MOTIFS == VEIL
NAMES
TERMS == 'MEANING-CREATION'; MOOD

If the humans, the humane and civilized members of our species, emerge 'from' the veil of dust, there are two ways in which this could happen. One is, as SRF notes, that they emerge 'from' the veiling cloud of dust because like all the children of Adam they are made of dust. On this reading, the 'us' refers to our whole species.

But anotherpossibility is that some people emerge 'from behind the veil of dust' because they are coming from the Unseen, the ġhaib , or some other mystical realm. This reading would suggest that while many or most of mankind [ādmī , which definitely includes women] may simply be made of dust, at long intervale a special, highly evolved, 'humane' one emerges from a higher spiritual realm. The speaker positions himself as one of them, but the grammar of the second line makes it feel very probable that he is describing himself as part of a small, rare subgroup.