S. R. Faruqi:

This theme is common in our poetry. Mir himself has composed it several times; for example, in the first divan itself [{350,5}]:

jis jā kih ḳhas-o-ḳhār ke ab ḍher lage haiñ
yāñ ham ne iñhīñ āñkhoñ se dekhīñ haiñ bahāreñ

[in the place where now heaps of dry-grass and thorns have piled up
here we, with these very eyes, have seen springtimes]

Mir Soz has very well composed,

gużārūñ hūñ jis ḳharābe se kahte haiñ vāñ ke log
hai koʾī din kī bāt yih ghar thā yih bāġh thā

[in the ruins that I pass through, the people there say,
'some days ago, this was a house, this was a garden']

Mir Hasan has composed this theme in his individual manner:

ab jahāñ ḳhār-o-ḳhas paṛe haiñ kabhī
ham ne yāñ āshiyāñ banāʾe the

[now where thorns and dry-grass are lying, at one time
we had made a nest here]

Nasir Kazmi has changed the metaphor and made a superb verse:

ḍere ḍāle haiñ bagoloñ ne jahāñ
us t̤araf chashmah ravāñ thā pahle

[where the whirlwinds have pitched their tent
in that direction a fountain flowed, formerly]

Mir's present verse is, on the basis of several qualities, the choicest of them all. The first point is that in Mir's verse there's a great deal of 'mood', but there are also forms of meaning. The first line has two interpretations: 'those places where thorn-thickets have now appeared', or 'those places that have now become thorn-thickets'.

The second line has a number of interpretations: (1) formerly, or in past days, springtimes have passed through here; (2) formerly, to these places springtime had come a number of times; (3) formerly, to these places various kinds of springtime had come; (4) formerly, in these places a number of times, or in various ways, festive occasions had arisen.

Please consider the word yahīñ . At first glance it seems that it would have been proper for the first line's jahāñ to be juxtaposed in the second line to vahāñ . A good poet would have done exactly this. But the great poet, by using yahīñ , created an entirely unexpected kind of meaning: that those places where there were springtimes, those very places were compelled to become thorn-thickets.

That is, if springtime hadn't come, or if springtime festivals hadn't arisen, then those places would also not have been compelled to turn into thorn-thickets. To turn into a thorn-thicket is in fact the result of springtime. Now we realize that it would have been better if springtime hadn't come, because then no thorn-thicket would have appeared. It would have been an ordinary field or bush-filled scrubland. Nothing is worse than a thorn-thicket, because it's no good to anybody. Everyone hates a thorn-thicket and avoids entering it.

Just look-- people have been using this theme for two or two and a half centuries, but no one has been able to obtain a 'meaning-creation' like Mir's. And with 'mood' in addition. If Mir made a claim of Ustad-ship, then how was he wrong? In the first divan [{585,7}]:

is fan meñ koʾī be-tah kyā ho mirā maʿāriẓ
avval to maiñ sanad hūñ phir yih mirī zabāñ hai

[in this art, how would any depth-less person be my competitor?
first, I am a 'warrant'; then, there's this language of mine]

The claim is true: because of his masterful dominion over language, Mir used to make very small words so full of depth.

Then, ḳhār-zār is an interesting word. It does not appear in the [dictionaries] nūr ul-luġhāt or the āṣifiyah . In Platts it is entered as masculine. In the Urdu dictionary of the Taraqqi Urdu Board, Karachi, too, it is masculine. But the 'warrants' that they give don't verify whether it's masculine or feminine. Both Jalil Manikpuri's book tażkīr-o-tānīṡ and Afaq Banarsi's muʿīn ul-shuʿarā too are devoid of this word. Thus on the warrant of Mir's usage we'll have to declare it to be feminine, although all the Urdu words that end in zār are masculine.

FWP:

SETS == HI
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS == 'MEANING-CREATION'; REFRAIN; THEME

As a very short meter with a remarkably long refrain, this ghazal is an extreme case among all Mir's ghazals. Six syllables of the line are taken up by rhyme and refrain, leaving only five syllables free. Thus Mir's genius for 'making very small words so full of depth' is quite necessary here. And, as SRF notes, it's fully on display.

Note for translation fans: How to translate ho gaʾī haiñ ? The radically literal would be 'have become', but in English that requires either a predicate nominative ('thorn-thickets have become X', or 'X have become thorn-thickets') or else a different sentence structure ('there have come to be thorn-thickets'). I've opted in this case for 'have appeared', even though it's not ideal. But then, my pursuit of extreme literalness would undoubtedly look quixotic to most translators anyway. As always, I'm not seeking to provide a fine reading experience in English; I want to provide a fine reading experience in Urdu, and the clunky English is meant to help us get there.