baskih saudaa-e ;xayaal-e zulf va;hshat-naak hai
taa dil-e shab aabnuusii shaanah aasaa chaak hai
1) to such an extent the madness of the thought of curls is wildness-creating
2) as far as midnight/'heart of the night', like an ebony comb, there is a slit/cleft
aabnuusii : 'Made of ebony; black as ebony; black'. (Platts p.5)
dil-e shab : 'Midnight'. (Steingass p.531)
aasaa : 'Like, resembling'. (Platts p.46)
chaak : 'Fissure, cleft, rent, slit, a narrow opening (intentionally left in clothes); — adj. Rent, slit, torn, lacerated'. (Platts p.418)
The madness of imagining the beloved's curls creates much wildness. So much so that the very same effect took place on the black night as well. The night experienced madness over the beloved's curls; its heart became full of slits, like an ebony comb.
SETS == PETRIFIED PHRASES
CURLS: {14,6}
MADNESS: {14,3}
SOUND EFFECTS: {26,7}
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
The thought of the curls is maddening because of their absolute blackness, thickness, envelopingness; not only the lover, but even the night itself, is driven to 'wildness' by them. The proof of the night's wildness can be seen in the 'slit' that extends all the way to its heart-- the ordinary lover tears open his collar (on this practice of chaak-e garebaan see {17,9}), but the night goes further. In Persian, dil-e shab is 'midnight' (see the definition above); as usual, when Ghalib brings in such a petrified phrase he plays with both the idiomatic sense and the dictionary meaning, 'heart of the night'.
Moreover, the word aabnuusii (see the definition above) is sonorous, beautiful, and quite rare (it never appears in any divan verse). It thus deserves the credit of being a 'fresh word'. The night is like an ebony comb because a comb too has 'slits' that go all the way to its backbone. As Zamin disapprovingly points out, the 'ebony comb' simile is based almost entirely on the shared quality of blackness. But it could also be said that the 'thought of the curls' drives the half-crazed night to wish to subdue and straighten the curls, to 'comb them out'. And an aabnuusii shaanah is a gorgeous phonetic object in its own right, full of long vowels. (It is also cleverly 'seated' in the line: it begins with ab aab , and ends with ah aa .
Zamin:
That is (from my heart) as far as the 'heart of the night', there has been a slit/tear-- the kind of slit that's in a comb. And the cause of this slit's occurring is the thought of the curls. Only through the wordplay of the curls' blackness has the slit reached to the 'heart of the night', and through this same wordplay he has adopted the ebony of the comb.
== Zamin, p. 436