In
the temple of my heart’s city
Someone
rings the bell
Kindles
a lamp
Then
gradually
Disappears
down the back steps
(Heart’s city)
In variant worlds of extensive change and often
alarming consequence, it is so heartening to be able to share in the
realization that the true passion and characteristic sensitivities of genuine
human emotion very much remain the constant beacons of hope and reassurance to
a society in the making. The concept of human love in the classical world of
art, music and literature, collectively, is widely regarded as the very
pinnacle in terms of creative endeavour and ultimate achievement.
The entire world loves a lover, so the saying goes,
and love poetry has apparently flourished from well before the annals of first
recorded time. Having previously been honoured to be invited to review SOME
MOMENTS OF LOVE, an impassioned collection of poems by Hamza Hassan
Sheikh, a gifted Romantic poet from Pakistan, it is with great pleasure that
his second published collection has now come my way for due appraisal.
The title of this work may, to the uninitiated, seem a
trifle puzzling, but when one clearly understands that in the same way that
various familiar artifacts, within a museum, are necessarily displayed to keep
alive our pageant of history, so too a lover, parted from the previously adored
one who had been the absolute light of his life, must find it consoling and expedient
to arrange memories and significant vignettes in such a way that their
respective recollection might never fade:
Though
you are dead
And
gone from my sight
Yet
your figure
Is
part of my soul!
(To
See You Again)
Death imagery certainly plays its part in the poetry
of love, for when one loses one’s life-partner, whether to the death of that
person, to the arms of another or even to eventual total separation, it is that
same intensity of grief that surviving partner must endure.
Listen!
My heart’s slogan
Abide
in it like a star
And
give me salvation
From
this solitude.
(Solitude)
Hamza Hassan Sheikh has previously experienced many of
the pitfalls of a doomed romance, but has raised above all recourse and
temptation to indulge in self-pity, to transpose his combined feelings of hope,
passion, anger and lasting affection into beautiful poetry. The English that he
undertakes within his verse is strongly suggestive of how it might have been
expressed in his own mother tongue.
There are other poems, too, which indicate the poet’s
milder form of temperament. Sparrows, for example is a poem of great simplicity, crafted with a strong
element of renewed childlike wonderment. The same can be said for his poem, Sunflower, another short poem that clearly
reveals the poet’s life long love of the natural world. In his poem, Hawks
of the Air, however he uses
bird imagery to the full, to exemplify the courage and dedication of a nation’s
brave air force pilots. Another endearing facet of Hamza’s poetry is his
unabashed recourse to daydreams-which is again, rather child like in its dream
like forays. In his poem, The World of Fancy, Hamza drifts
into a fanciful world of the imagination in which he becomes one with the
mythical naiads of a land beneath the sea. In a shorter poem that employs sea
imagery to a much more serious degree, I was impressed by the following words:
My
heart is ocean of grief
Your
awarded wound
Will
disappear in it
Like
a gem.
(Gem)
A superb collection by an up and coming, young poet of
international standing, Many will readily identify with faithfully emergent
instances of his remembered past experiences, here crystallized into inspired
romantic verse. Highly recommended!
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