This verse offers a spectacular display of paradox . If the speaker doesn't know something as crucial and desirable as the beloved's mouth, then he is a hopeless 'know-nothing', an ignoramus, one who doesn't know what should be known. (This is the general reading of the commentators.) On the multivalence of , see 12,2 . In the ghazal world, the beloved's rosebud mouth is so exquisitely small that it's in fact nonexistent; on this 'beloved has no mouth' motif, see 91,4 . So that if the speaker indeed knows her mouth, which itself is 'nothing', then he is a 'know-nothing' in exactly the opposite sense: he is one who knows what is there to be known-- namely, that same 'nothing'. There's also a lovely secondary word- and meaning-play: the juxtaposition of and . This clever pairing exploits the fact that means not only for something to be 'known', but often, colloquially, for something to 'appear' or 'seem' or 'be apparent' (think of ...). Whereas means not only 'to open' but also 'to be revealed', 'to be apparent', 'to become known'. So the not-becoming-apparent of her mouth results in the becoming-apparent of the speaker's 'knowing-nothing-ness'. Which invites us to ask, apparent to whom? Are there observers present, who are testing or judging his degree of knowledge of her mouth? And of course as a final flourish, is something that a mouth does. Her mouth is so small, so ultimately 'closed', that it is invisible or nonexistent-- which caused the speaker's 'knowing-nothing-ness' to become 'open'. How he longed to see her mouth itself become 'open', for words or even for a kiss! Instead, the radical 'closedness' of her mouth was what 'opened' the knowledge of his own state. For more examples of extreme wordplay involving , see 14 . graphics/nomouth.jpg