S. R. Faruqi:

For a theme similar to this one, see:

{239,1}.

Here too, as usual, on the theme of the ocean, Mir's imagination roils with new styles/aspects. To use for the spreading, rising wave the simile of an embrace is itself extremely eloquent [badii((]-- and in addition there's the theme that the ocean longs to embrace someone, and it's for this reason that it keeps sending up waves (which is the 'proof' of an ocean) like an embrace. Who else besides a beloved can this be, whom the ocean too longs to embrace, and every moment opens its embrace to draw toward itself?

This is also the theme of 'absorption in the beloved', and the theme of making the beloved the center, and feeling and creating every experience in the context of the beloved. In order to learn how a modern poet has used this theme, consider this verse by Muhammad Alavi:

guldaan me;N gulaab kii kalyaa;N mahak u;Thii;N
kursii ne us ko dekh ke aa;Gosh vaa kiyaa

[in the vase, the rosebuds suddenly gave off scent
the chair, seeing her, opened an embrace]

The theme of the ardor of wave and ocean, he has expressed like this in the first divan:

{354,4}.

The sense of ;xvaahish as 'meaning, intention' or 'desired' isn't found in the dictionaries. In the farhang-e a;sar , Asar Sahib too has not noted it, although the idiom is present: mai;N ne apnii ;xvaahish ;haa.sil kar lii . Or if there's any doubt about that, Mir himself has shown it in his own usage in the present verse.

FWP:

SETS
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS

Well, I like {239,1} much more than the present verse, because it's so much more open-ended. The idea of the ocean as a lover leaves only the question 'of whom?', which can only have some kind of ho-hum reply (the Lord, the beloved) that doesn't exactly surprise us. By contrast, {239,1} offers us complex, mysterious behavior by the ocean-- some mixture of passion and conflict, some 'secret' that roils the depths into 'frenzies' might be erotic, or mystical, or maybe even something else (but what?).

Although the present verse does have the enjoyably macabre image of the ocean wanting so strongly to 'caress' and 'fondle' someone, by arching its tall waves around its beloved. For the ocean's beloved, how would this experience be different from drowning? (Though of course, the drowning could always be construed as a mystical 'absorption in the beloved'.)