Some general points about this whole gazal have been made in 85,1 . For discussion of the liver's role as a blood-maker in ghazal physiology, see 30,2 . To my ear, there's that same great kvetching quality here as in 85,2 . It's a martyred lament, almost a whine-- 'So you think it's easy to weep tears of blood? It's not so easy, let me tell you! Why, you wouldn't believe the state my liver is in!' And so on, perhaps at some length. Only by implication do we realize that the present is being juxtaposed to the past. When the lover complains of the exhaustion of his heart and the unfitness of his liver, his complaint is lodged firmly in the present. But hovering over the verse is the implication that all this was different in the past, and that this awareness redoubles the lover's suffering. For the lover is in the position not of an ordinary person coming to grips with physical decline, but of an Olympic athlete who has long ago given his best, whose body is not what it used to be. He monitors his losses more obsessively, and mourns them more deeply, than the rest of us can really imagine. His commitment to weeping tears of blood was such that he can never be reconciled to his loss of the power to do so. For a lover, it must seem like a terrible form of impotence. graphics/blood.jpg