;Gariib-e sitam-diidah-e baaz-gashtan
su;xan huu;N su;xan bar lab-aavurdagaa;N kaa
1) a stranger/wretch [who is] tyranny-experienced
of back-returning
2) I am the speech of those with speech brought to their lips
;Gariib : 'Foreign, alien; strange, wonderful; rare, unusual, extraordinary; --poor, destitute; meek, mild, humble, lowly; --a stranger, foreigner, an alien; --a poor man; a meek or humble person'. (Platts p.770)
gashtan : 'To turn, return, change, alter, repeat, renew; to become, to be changed, converted, perverted; to twist; to go away, depart; to saunter, to look about'. (Steingass p.1091)
aavurdah : 'That which is brought or carried over: --one who is taken into favour, a protégée'. (Platts p.104)
For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices.
On this ghazal as a kind of unlabeled verse-sequence, see {37,1}. On the macaronic structure of this ghazal, with its Persian first lines and Urdu second lines, see {37,2}.
What does it mean to be one who has been tyrannized over, or oppressed, by 'back-returning'? Such a person could be one who has done a lot of retreating or back-returning himself (out of cowardice? out of weakness? out of some other dire necessity?). Or he could be one who has suffered from someone else's cruel back-returning, as the lover has suffered from that of the beloved (see {14,7} for a classic example).
The 'speech of those with speech brought to their lips' seems to allude to a situation in which people are on the verge of speaking, but the speech hasn't actually emerged from their lips. There's nothing in the grammar of the line to suggest that it won't emerge. But of course the juxtaposition of the first line makes the prognosis grimly clear. The speech is destined not to be uttered: instead of emerging, it 'back-returns' or retreats.
If I 'am' such speech, then of course I'm intimately familiar with the cruelty of such suppression. Either I'm familiar, as a 'stranger' or 'wretch', with the need to suppress my complaints, demands, protests against injustice, etc. Or else, as a 'stranger' or 'wretch', I'm familiar with the treachery and fickleness of others (local people? beautiful beloveds?) who prove themselves radically and cruelly untrustworthy. If they speak at all, then even as I hang on their words, they go back on them. If they don't even bother to speak, then I have the agony of watching (what might be) the longed-for words trembling on their lips, unspoken.
Or else 'they' are strangers and wretches, sufferers and lovers, like myself, people who often have to cruelly and painfully 'swallow' their own (unspoken or even spoken) words.
Gyan Chand:
baaz gashtan : to go somewhere and then turn and come back from there. su;xan bar lab aavurdagaa;N : those people who brought an utterance to their lips, and then swallowed it-- that is, they didn't present it. To go somewhere and return, and while making an utterance not to make an utterance, is to go near a desired destination, and then turn and come back from there without accomplishing anything. I am just such a stranger and traveler. (98)