Ghazal 424x, Verse 1

Asi:

My tongue is a faqir or a beggar, that at your door is making the request 'Give me strength of expression'. And this request is because it knows that you can give, and do give, strength of expression to silence as well, and can cause silence to wear the dress of speech.

== Asi, p. 308

Zamin:

pairaayah = gold and jewelry and attire. The poetry-creator addresses the Lord and says, 'Oh you who have created speech out of silence, language asks from you the alms of strength of speech'.

== Zamin, p. 450

Gyan Chand:

In this ghazal the addressee is generally the Lord. The tongue asks from you the alms of skill in speech. Silence receives the jewelry of expression from you.

== Gyan Chand, p. 472

FWP:

SETS == POETRY
SPEAKING: {14,4}

For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.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

As Gyan Chand notes, the addressee throughout this ghazal seems to be the Lord (or else a beloved so divinized that it's hard to tell the difference).

What does it mean for 'silence' to have the 'adornment of expression'? The obvious possibility is that the Lord would cause silence to give rise to speech, or to be replaced by speech. Thus such a prayer is a very suitable one for a poet to make.

But it's also possible that silence itself is given by the Lord an eloquence of its own. A notable case in which silence can speak is that of collyrium, which silently 'speaks' in a way that makes it-- in the ghazal world-- a natural enemy of the voice (for discussion and examples, see {44,1}). On this reading, the second line would be adducing another example of the Lord's creative power: since he can make silence expressive, he is beseeched to make speech expressive as well.