For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices . This verse is NOT one of his choices; I thought it was interesting and have added it myself. For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in 4,8x . This was the opening-verse of the original ghazal. On the nature and use of the lancet, see 166,2 . Well, we have 'A is B' (or of course 'B is A') in the first line, and 'C is D' (or of course 'D is C', though in this case it makes almost no difference) in the second line. That is, 'springtime is equipment' (or 'equipment is springtime'), and then 'madness is lancet'. As so often, we're then also left to figure out for ourselves the relationship between the two lines. What's intriguing is how differently the symmetry effects work in the two lines. In the first line, we have a very coherent choice: either the 'springtime' with its rose-blood constitutes the 'equipment' for the lover's bloody tears (1a), or else the 'equipment' of the lover's bloody tears is what constitutes the 'springtime' with its rose-blood (1b). Either nature shapes the lover (1a), or the lover shapes nature (1b). This is a familiar Ghalibian doubleness of choice; for one of many classic examples, see the second line of 10,6 . This kind of back-and-forth oscillation of choices is fascinating. Any hearer or reader, noting the marked parallelism of structure between the two lines, might anticipate another such enjoyable doubleness of microcosm versus macrocosm, the human versus the non-human. But the second line disrupts our expectations entirely, through . For if the lightning can be 'mad', is it then a lover too, is it then personified and even quasi-human? It seems thus to span the gulf between the human and the natural worlds, and blur the clear dichotomy in the first line. And then, the rest of the line is even more disrupted. It's easy to see a bolt of lightning as a lancet, but the line instead gives us the 'madness' as a lancet-- thus disrupting the easily imagined 'objective correlative' that we were expecting. Both a lightning-bolt and a lancet come down swiftly, penetrate sharply, cause pain, open up interior worlds to the outside world, etc. How annoying it is to be denied that elegant metaphor! Yet this is exactly what the line does-- it takes us almost all the way there, and then thwarts our pleasant, satisfying expectations. We are left frustrated, vexed, with so much more mental work to be done, and now with seemingly inferior tools. (But are they really?) This kind of disruption too is very Ghalibian, in my view. We have to think, and think again. We have to work harder than we thought, and for uncertain rewards. We are forbidden to pick the low-hanging fruit. Could any ordinary poet make us sit still for this? graphics/lightning.jpg