Ghazal 307x, Verse 3

Asi:

What we had understood was erroneous, but, oh dawn of 'union', you ought to show mercy on the heart-wound. It has a rightful claim on you-- for a long time you have laughed/smiled within the veil of this very heart-wound.

Or else this: Whatever we considered to be the reality of the smile of the heart-wound, was in fact erroneous. We had considered it to be a wound, but the reality was, oh dawn of 'union', that within the veil of this wound you were laughing/smiling. But nevertheless, oh dawn of 'union', now you ought to show mercy toward it-- your laughter/smile is for it a cause of harm.

The gist is that the sunrise of the dawn of 'union' is [habitually] through a liver-wound.

== Asi, pp. 151-152

Zamin:

The tearing-open of the dawn is its heart-wound, and within the veil of this wound the dawn laughs/smiles. That is, the same tearing-open of the dawn, the same smile of the dawn, that is called pau ph a;Tnaa .

The dawn of 'union' that used to laugh within the veil of the heart-wound-- we did not understand the cause of its laughter/smile, or we misunderstood it. Now we have realized that the cause of its laughter/smile was that the dawn of 'union' will one day change into the evening of separation, and the heart too will be wounded by the sword of separation. Thus he says 'Now have mercy-- tell me some plan through which our wound would be able to become scarred over, the way your wound becomes scarred over'. And the reason for making this request of the dawn is that the dawn also has camphor (the 'whiteness of dawn'); it's possible that upon this entreaty it might bestow on him a little camphor salve.

But the words are insufficient for this meaning. A second point is that the dawn of 'union' has already taken its leave; now the address ought to be to the dawn of separation.

== Zamin, pp. 217-218

Gyan Chand:

We had had a misunderstanding: having considered the heart-wound to be a wound, we were having it treated. Later we realized, oh dawn of 'union', that this is your 'teeth-baring smile'. The dawn of 'union' is the dawn of the day when the beloved will come and meet the lover. He requests the dawn of 'union', 'Show this mercy: don't fill my heart-wound with scar tissue and heal it over. Because for me it is a sign of the 'wound of dawn'.' Dawn too is a kind of opening.

'Have mercy on the heart-wound' can also have the simple, straightforward meaning of 'Now leave the wound alone, let it scar over'.

== Gyan Chand, p. 245

FWP:

SETS == FILL-IN
SCRIPT EFFECTS: {33,7}
SMILE/LAUGHTER: {27,4}
‘UNION’: {5,2}
VEIL: {6,1}

For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.

A wound has a 'mouth'; a 'gaping' wound has a mouth that could be said to be 'smiling', or even 'laughing'. And the dawn, imagined as a white streak along the horizon, can be said to be an ominous 'teeth-baring smile'; for more on this, see {67,1}. Bringing together these two established images, the speaker asks the dawn of 'union' to show mercy to the heart-wound, since the heart-wound was its old lurking-place: it used to 'laugh/smile' behind the 'veil' of the heart-wound.

For if the dawn of 'union' used to laugh/smile in the heart-wound, but has ceased to do so, that would be an ominous sign. Or if the dawn of 'union' showed a teeth-baring smile of hostility or disdain, that would be an even worse sign. Perhaps the longed-for 'union' will not take place after all, or perhaps in some way it will prove to be sinister or even deadly. This kind of foreboding might well be a reason for the speaker's plea for mercy.

But how and what, exactly, had the speaker 'understood wrongly'? There could be all sorts of misjudgments about the deadliness of passion, the temperament of the beloved, and the limits of life itself, to which he could have fallen prey. The verse gives not the slightest clue, and we're left to fill in the gap based on our own experience and intuition.

There's also a 'script effect' that may not have any relation to the semantic content of the verse, but is nevertheless conspicuous: za;xm and ra;hm differ from each other only through two dots that appear in the former word but not in the latter.