Ghazal 85, Verse 5

Nazm:

That is, the limit of the difficulties of passion has been reached, and all the blood of the heart and liver has been expended. (84)

== Nazm page 84

Bekhud Mohani:

Weeping is no easy thing. For it, there ought to be strength in the heart and liver-- which has already been offered up to the difficulties of passion and the difficulties of life. (173)

Josh:

The difficulties of passion have already passed beyond the limit. Now not even weeping blood is easy. Neither is there strength in the heart, nor is there that state of the liver such that it would be able to give blood for weeping. (170)

FWP:

SETS == KAHAN
JIGAR: {2,1}

Some general points about this whole gazal have been made in {85,1}.

For discussion of the liver's role as a blood-maker in ghazal physiology, see {30,2}.

To my ear, there's that same great kvetching quality here as in {85,2}. It's a martyred lament, almost a whine-- 'So you think it's easy to weep tears of blood? It's not so easy, let me tell you! Why, you wouldn't believe the state my liver is in!' And so on, perhaps at some length.

Only by implication do we realize that the present is being juxtaposed to the past. When the lover complains of the exhaustion of his heart and the unfitness of his liver, his complaint is lodged firmly in the present. But hovering over the verse is the implication that all this was different in the past, and that this awareness redoubles the lover's suffering.

For the lover is in the position not of an ordinary person coming to grips with physical decline, but of an Olympic athlete who has long ago given his best, whose body is not what it used to be. He monitors his losses more obsessively, and mourns them more deeply, than the rest of us can really imagine. His commitment to weeping tears of blood was such that he can never be reconciled to his loss of the power to do so. For a lover, it must seem like a terrible form of impotence.