From the Norton Anthology of World Literature, Volume E:

"Among the Urdu poets, Ghalib achieves to perfection the ghazal poet's goal of balancing subjectivity with a universalizing philosophical vision. Like other forms of classical Indian and Persian poetry, the ghazal is a highly conventional genre. In his poems Ghalib molds the very conventions of the ghazal into a personal, even private, poetic language that perfectly expresses his sensibility.

The typical ghazal is a poem of reflections on love in all its aspects... the ghazal became, in its independent form, the favored vehicle for Persian and Indian mystical poets writing about the soul's yearning for God, as well as for secular poets whose theme was human love.

...Thus the ghazal is not a poem about a specific love affair, or even about a particular mood of love, but a lyrical contemplation of love as a metaphor for the relations that exist among human beings, God, and the world."



Ghalib:



Ghazal XIV

Wings are like dust, weightless; the wind may steal them;
otherwise they would have neither power nor endurance.

What beauty now is bringing nearer the face of heaven
So that the path bears not dust but flower visions?

At the mere thought of the flower's face, some are drunk.
There is nothing else in the cellar, in the wineskins.

I have been shamed by my love's power to destroy.
In this house the wish to build lives alone.

Now Ghalib, these verses are idle amusements.
Clearly nothing is gained by such a performance.





Ghazal XII

I'm neither the loosening of song nor the close-drawn tent of music;
I'm the sound, simply, of my own breaking.

You were meant to sit in the shade of your rippling hair;
I was made to look further, into a blacker tangle.

All my self-possession is self-delusion;
what violent effort, to maintain this nonchalance!

Now that you've come, let me touch you in greeting
as the forehead of a beggar touches the ground.

No wonder you came looking for me, you
who care for the grieving, and I the sound of grief.