Well, the last time you see I turned it down to proceed. But
the nights are long and the sleeps are hard to struck. And I am very much a
doctor to diagnose my thesis point about a half-read book right or wrong. So,
you may believe, i proceeded with the book “Pakistani Literature”. And I did
enter into the poetry section last time with the perusal of two of poems done.
I quite forgot the fact sir! that the book i was reading hath contents of different
minds. And what i am provided with at the beginning of the book might not be
the same that is to come! This oblivious leading lead me to the prejudiced
notion of regarding the book unjustified to its subject. So, when i began this
time, i was reminded by the click of notion that the last book injected –well to
put it in my plain words: the poetry is more prophetic to pierce into the
spirits and express undulating spiritual experiences which prose is incapable
to even hunt. And i was convinced as i did ‘read’ poetry, or to put it other
way did elicit their conjectures and projections of lives, and riding in their
caprice becoming part and parcel of their hoods of words. Sometimes a hunter,
sometimes a lover, sometimes an artist, or may be a shopkeeper, or one who’s
waiting for his rail-train, or being struck by some brooding news from home, or
is it a picnic in the sun! When our life is chilled, we are warmed in theirs.
We tend to life, when we are dead. That’s why those in corners read more than
you basking in love. They are shrunk to borrow life. And so did i that night.
These poems propped my head distracted in their throbbing. I loved especially
ones of Athar Tahir, Maki Kureishi, and Taufiq Rafat. The poetry- their dusky,
simple styles, some real close to our inbred culture, though some in vaults of
foreign shades. The tradition i found, even ours could be expressed! The sentiment
is in soaring high in the soaking clouds that says ‘see down there you live too’
and down here then i cast my eyes above, then tilt it down ove’ the book,
euphoric at finding these reverend spirits found in print. ..How Maki Kureishi
puts in her poem “Absent Daughter”,
‘I keep listening
for your voice, but
this silence clangs
like a denting yard.’
A sentiment so plain, yet deep and like coaxing those
injuries again. End, she says:
‘I hear only
the postman’s tread,
and the clang
of your letter.’
In her poem “The Shopkeeper”, how with decent jib of words,
she expresses..
‘Carefully, at each
slap of the wind
he dusts his shop;...’
In another verse... she goes as..
‘Pausing now and again
to assess
his work. Does he sell
anything?...’
Oh, i am so in love with her. She writes beautifully. There is
no pretension, nor force in it. Its like a sway of feeling. No more.
Alamgir Hashmi in his poem “Down And Out In Malibu”, how he
excels in his wandering spirits, and says:
‘The bird and the
breeze are themselves a wandering lot,
and do not mind this
clumsy seeking of refuge.’
And in his another poem “On Seeing A Poster In The Showcase
Cinemas”, he puts..
‘that i am too far
removed
to fight back with them
the rain, wind, anything.’
The nuance troubled
with hope and its subtleties of enaction, that’s the hook of interpretation i
score here with his rigorous expression.
There is wonder in art you know, to mark that how of all it
chose a penner and exprex’t itself in the vain collapses of poet’s inks.
...To read more of the poetry of Pakistani literature, consult
this book “Pakistani Literature”- The Contemporary
English Writers edited by “Alamgir Hashmi”.
P.S
My apologies, in being quick to mark my quirk thoughts on
half-read book last time :( . Ah! Just that i have short energy-span.
