The lover isn't finished yet-- how can Death come calling so inopportunely? Like a professional, the lover knows what needs to be done, and he knows that it hasn't yet been accomplished. He doesn't like to leave a job half-finished. So he tells Death, 'let [it] remain' [], which is colloquially used to mean 'let it go' or 'drop the subject', a sense that works perfectly in itself. Only when we get a little further along in the line do we realize that it's , so that the literal meaning, 'let me remain here', is also invoked; but as usual, both meanings work enjoyably together. Above all, the verse centers on the punchiness and complexities of ; for discussion and more examples see 22,6 . This crucial little word is put in the punch-word position, as the last possible word in the verse, the rhyme -word; and its two fundamental meanings, the Indic 'work' and the Persian 'desire', are both utterly appropriate. 'Let me stay a while longer, because I still have a lot of work to do before I can get my liver into its ideal dripped-away state'. 'Let me stay a while longer, because I still have a lot of desire-- desire that will, one way or another, end up duly liquefying my liver.' Or, as Iqbal later put it, . graphics/liver.jpg