For more on , see 59,7 . This is a smashingly in-your-face mushairah verse in its structure. The first line is set up in a way that positively forces us to misread it. For 'faithfulness' [] is feminine, and the feminine singular verb 'kept on going' [] not only agrees with it, but also makes for a perfect semantic fit, for naturally the progressive departure of 'faithfulness' would seem indeed to be a case of 'cruelty/injustice' []. Not until-- after a delay, of course, under mushairah performance conditions-- we've finally been vouchsafed the second line, can we perceive that the feminine singular thing that 'kept on going' was not faithfulness after all, but the speaker's 'life' []. And the only way we can perceive this, or indeed make sense of the second line at all, is by recognizing the wonderfully evoked idiom , 'for the life to be on the lips', meaning for one to be on the verge of dying. Even then, we recognize the phrase only by implication , since the idiom on which the whole verse rests is nowhere present in the verse itself. As Faruqi observes, the (Persianized) idiom 'for the life to be with the lip' has here been construed as a relationship, and thus one that must be given up for the sake of strict 'faithfulness' to the beloved. The 'life' must abandon its longtime companion, the 'lip', even as the lover must abandon his life. Both, in the name of 'faithfulness', are practicing a 'cruelty' or 'injustice'; the verse exclaims at it, calls our attention to it-- perhaps reproachfully, but perhaps with a reluctant (or even unreluctant) admiration. graphics/deathbed.jpg