O unfulfilled sigh, since you turned back right from the way, at least tell me how far the door of effect (acceptance) was.

Here, the poet shares an intimate, tender conversation with his own sigh, personifying it as an exhausted traveler who gave up and turned back before reaching its destination. 'Baab-e-asar' is the door of answered prayers, and the lover is left wondering just how close he came before his hope ran dry. The real ache of this couplet isn't just that the prayer went unanswered, but the haunting, human question of 'what if'—the agony of wondering if grace was only a single step away.