Furqat’s musaddas, “Kashmirda” and artistic devices in the ghazal

A musaddas is a poem in six-line stanzas. In Furqat’s musaddas the lyrical hero addresses a hunter: release the gazelle caught in the snare – it is wretched like me, wandering without finding its mate, ill-fated, wounded by the arrow of separation, its liver burnt. Each stanza ends with the repeated line meaning “how many wounds from the arrow of separation, like mine”. The poet begs the hunter to let it go to the mountains, where for some days it may play with its mate and pray for him; if he will not pity the gazelle, let him pity its companion. The gazelle is the poet himself, wandering in exile, while the hunter can stand for fate or oppressive forces. In “Kashmirda” the poet sees a moon-faced beauty in Kashmir and is enchanted; when he says “I am captive of your hair”, she answers “drop this fancy, your life will pass in chains”. When he says the dot above the lip seems misplaced, she laughs and says the scribe of the Creator’s power made a slip in editing; asked “why did you leave your homeland?”, the poet answers that exile was in Furqat’s fate.