In Love Bolder I Become

In Love Bolder I Become - form Summary

Ghazal's Autonomous Couplets

This poem is a ghazal from Mirza Ghalib’s Diwan-e-Ghalib presented as a series of pithy couplets. Each couplet reads as a self-contained epigram or vignette about love, intoxication, humiliation and self-annihilation. The form’s fragmentation permits abrupt shifts of image and mood—wine, pleading, burning desire, and even a coffin—without a linear narrative. That structure matters because it creates a cumulative portrait of obsessive devotion: repetition of themes rather than plot builds intensity, and each compact couplet delivers a concentrated emotional or philosophical insight about the speaker’s condition.

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In love, bolder I become, once openly I cried, I was washed so thoroughly that I got sanctified. To make payment for my wine, I sold my drinking gear, just these two burdens I had, thus managed to clear. Your waywardness was the cause for your notoriety shrewd you did become although, temperamentally. Who says the plaints of nightingales are to no avail, a million hearts of roses are rent behind the veil. What of being and nothingness of lovers you inquire, they have burnt like leaves and straw in heat of their desire. I had gone there to complain about her unconcern, just a glance she cast on me, to ashes did I turn. In such a style my coffin, she carried yesterday seeing which e'en enemies of mine were caused dismay.