For the few verses about drawing or painting, see 6,1 . Verses with dance imagery: 282x,1 ; 285x,2 . ABOUT REEDS: The ghazal world has various uses for the (also scanned ) or reed -thicket (see the definition above). Here, the straw grows into a reed-thicket, which is a source of reed-flutes ( bamboo is one species within the same larger family); 130,6x also speaks of growing such a reed-thicket, while 169,6 warns against the allure of such a flute; see also the abruptly assertive 196,1 , and 361x,4 with its enjoyable theory of flute-construction. Reeds can also be woven into a reed-mat [], as in 18,7x , which makes the relationship clear; more examples include 4,13x ; 26,5 ; 165,5x // 361x,7 . And 200,4x envisions the reeds as being used to make the shafts of arrows. Reeds can also be made into pens for writing or drawing, as in 433x,3 . Lots of long sounds, a very flowing verse-- appropriately for a study of music-making. There's an elegant ambiguity in , which can be either alive, like a nerve, or merely passively organic, like a fiber (see the definitions above). Thus 'vein' seemed the best single English translation. So the image evoked in the second line is either just a 'straw'-turned-flute clutched in the lover's teeth, or something actually sentient in its own right, a living extension of the quivering nerves of the reed-thicket. Do we then link music directly, organically, to pain? Or instead, is music linked to the suppression and sublimation of pain? Nazm's phrase 'the root of lamentation' also captures something of this ambiguity. In Persian (though not in Urdu), also has a prominent meaning of 'root'. Since Ghalib is so Persianized in his vocabulary, he might have had 'root' in mind as well. I thank Farhad Saheli for pointing out this possibility (June 2008). There's also, in Persian, the famous introduction to the Masnavi of Rumi, in which the reed-flute laments its separation from the reed-bed. Here's an article on that subject, * 'The Crisis of Identity in Rumi's "Tale of the Reed"' * by Firoozeh Papan-Matin (2005). For an even more potent imagining of the power of a suppressed , see 44,2 . For other 'straw in the teeth' verses, see 155,3 and 226,1 . Compare also 130,6x , with its less dramatic treatment of a very similar idea. We may also think of Krishna and his flute; but there's no reason to believe that Ghalib did. (Or, for that matter, that he didn't.) Note for meter fans: Here we have , scanned - = = ; in 18,7x we have , scanned = - = . Meanwhile the spelling remains unchanged. For more such conveniently permitted fluctuations, see the Glossary in the Practical Handbook of Urdu Meter . graphics/reedthicket.jpg