nah sove aabalo;N me;N gar sirishk-e diidah-e nam se
bah jaulaa;N-gaah-e naumiidii nigaah-e ((aajizaa;N paa hai
1) if it would not sleep in blisters, from/like the tears of a wet eye
2) in the exercise-field of despair, the gaze of weak ones is a foot
sove is an archaic form of so))e (GRAMMAR)
jaulaa;N-gaah : 'A place of exercise (for troops or for horses)'. (Platts p.398)
SETS == GROTESQUERIE
GAZE: {10,12}
For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices.
It's clear that in the ghazal world the gaze can have a 'foot' (so that it can 'travel' or 'wander' as it proverbially does). And if the foot sheds crystalline drops from round blisters when it encounters hard going, so the gaze can be said to do the same thing-- shedding crystalline tears from round eyes. It's grotesque, but in a sense it works.
The foot also 'sleeps', in the sense that it won't rouse itself to proper movement and action. This is the sense in which one's fortune 'sleeps'; on this concept see {84,1}.
The gaze of weak ones can thus 'run around' in an 'exercise-field' the way a foot can (be made t) run around in an exercise-field for some kind of training. But in this case, the practice is done in the 'exercise-field of despair'-- and how does one train for despair? Especially if the training of the gaze is always liable to be interrupted (and thus put to 'sleep') by fits of tears-- the way an athlete's foot-training would be interrupted by the presence, and bursting, of blisters.
But what does it mean for a linear, active, 'foot'-like gaze to 'sleep in blisters'? Does the gaze actually curl up inside not one but a series of 'blisters', or tears? Does it take on the form of (tear-like) blisters? Is that se in the first line a causal postposition ('by means of, through, because of'), or is it short for jaise ('like, in the style of')? Since the line is so unvisualizable anyway, it's unusually hard to decide-- and hard to enjoy the ambiguities and the choice.
This is the kind of verse that makes me just as glad Ghalib included in his published divan only some selections from his most extravagantly convoluted early poetry. But among the unpublished verses, I'm commenting only on those selected by Faruqi as the better ones. So it's always possible that there might be more in this verse, and I just haven't picked up on it.
Gyan Chand:
Remember a verse of [the great elegy-poet] Anis:
gar aa;Nkh se nikal ke ;Thahar jaa))e raah me;N
pa;R jaa))e;N laakh aabale paa-e nigaah me;N
[if, having emerged from the eye, it would pause on the road
there would fall a hundred thousand blisters from the foot of the gaze]
The creation of 'feet' for the gaze, and the putting of blisters on them, Ghalib had already versified long before Anis. He has used for the wet eyes of the weak ones the similitude of blisters. For the feet to 'sleep' is a well-known thing, because of which the feet become unable to walk and move. If there would be blisters on the feet, then too this same situation exists, as though the blistered-footedness is precisely the 'sleep' of the foot. The gaze of the weak ones has become frozen in the field of despair and has remained there. From the tears of the eye, blisters have befallen the foot of the gaze, as if its foot has gone to sleep in blisters. If this had not been the case, then the foot of the gaze would have been able to move through the field of despair and emerge out beyond it. That is, if tears would not be shed, if there would not willy-nilly be satisfaction [of the urge to weep], then the face of hope can be seen. (371)