In 10,3 , the forbidden turns the straw that the lover has taken between his teeth (in token of submission) into a reed-flute. The lover's suppressed lament thus has power over a straw. But in the present verse, the lover's suppressed suffering would apparently have enough power to reveal its presence on the beloved's face instead of his own. But how, exactly? The commentators do their best, but we don't really have a mechanism. Since when does the lover have such power over the beloved's face (and thus, apparently, over her heart)? If he really did have such power over the beloved, and knew it, why would he then suffer so extravagantly? There's a lack of instrumentality here that seriously weakens the verse. Something in the verse needs to tell us, or suggest to us, what mechanism for such grief-transfer is being invoked. In 6,6 , it's a single unshed tear-drop that turns into a typhoon, not the many that were actually shed; in the even more extreme 5,4 , a mere 'passing thought' of wildness accidentally burns up the desert; in 10,3 too (the one cited above)-- in all these cases the physical mechanism is readily apparent. The progression from drop to ocean, from burning thought to burning fire, from straw to reed-flute, offers just the kind of 'objective correlative' connection that's lacking in the present verse. graphics/grief.jpg