Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;

John Donne

Death, like a dictator, was in absolute control of everything in Peshawar on the sixteenth day of December in 2014. No one could walk a step on the desolate streets and in the deserted bazaars and not think of death overpowering everything that came in its way. Even poor old Nature could not escape the machinations of death as the evening breeze after the genocide reeked of incense.

Peshawar was then steeped in such unremitting grief that it hardly left anyone unaffected, leave alone its illustrious poets. Ejaz Rahim, now living in Islamabad after retirement from civil service, summed up the acute pain inflicted by tyrannical forces most poignantly when he wrote thus:

Creator of beauty

Lord of loveliness

To whom shall one turn

In this hour of ugliness?

Lord of lamp and light

Is it the final flood

When the lighthouse itself

Begins to spew darkness

And vomits death?

With someone as humane, compassionate and soft-spoken as Ejaz Rahim is known to be, the poet could not be thought of to be taking any pleasure from writing verses in such desperate vein. But the share weight of the gruesome events of that dreadful December appear to have had moved him so much that he had to choose the heading of the poem, Carnage in December, as the title of his twentieth book of poetry.

The night has passed

In indescribable pain

A sense of shock

A load of shame

Have weighed

Like Leviathans

Upon one’s bodily frame

It is indeed a shame that the perpetrators of the tragedy were then in possession of such diabolical powers that their evil deeds have

Death and life in December

made December literally synonymous with death. Sufficient proof of this was in evidence all around us this last December when death seemed to be once again stalking in our midst with unabashed chutzpah.

But Death’s reach is not overarching. Cedar does not die, not even in December. Poet Ejaz Rahim was born in Abbottabad, the land of cedars. He also lived in the Cedar House in his hometown, which for all the good reasons has lent him an inexhaustible strength. Thus after valiantly taking on Death in the ‘Carnage in December,’ the poet sat down and wrote some memorable verses, most of them in December, on a wide array of matters, which form part of his latest book of poetry.

Ejaz Rahim has been scribing history in verse for quite some time now. His latest book of poetry is perhaps his twentieth.

History gives voice

To time’s biography

Every human being

Is a page on which

Time scribes

Its narrative of choice

And still the tale

Unfolds and spills

Over and beyond

Its table of contents

In an earlier write up on the poet’s immense work of poetry, one had in a lighter critique pointed out that the poet had perhaps lavished too much praise on some of his friends and some other people of fame. The poet, in his kindness, had liked the pun and mentioned it while expressing gratitude in one of his emails. His latest collection of poems includes one among others about a longstanding association with a lawyer from his earliest days in the civil service.

The nostalgic poem is titled ‘Akbar Khan Swati Advocate.’ The substance encapsulated in the fast moving poem is so powerful that it literally overwhelms the combined strength of the Siran, Kaghan, Jhelum and Indus rivers that flow through the vast expanse of the verdant vale of Mansehra.

If you wish to emerge

Unscathed, someone suggested,

Stick to the neutral span

Between the Khankhel caucus

And the Swati clan

But none prepared me

To face the legal eagles

I entered the slippery turf

With the sang-froid

Of a greenhorn in town

Until my mettle was tested

By the likes of Akbar Khan Swati

The turret in Mansehra’s civic crown

One wonders if Mr. Swati or any of his wards or clansman has read this dazzling display of words that describes the beauty of their climes in such a forceful manner that it may beckon travelers from far and wide. But alas! Avid, or even desultory, readers are hard to find in our milieus these days or else the indefatigable poet would not have versed:

One has grown tried

Of serenading

To the deaf

Or penning encomiums

To the dumb

But for someone who can produce his best works in December, life goes on and poems keep filling up voids and blanks as far as Ejaz Rahim is concerned.

The search for a good poem

Is an endless endeavour

In the end a good poem

Is what it does

To a man

Any sort of man

With any sort of impulse

Feeling or word

Elsewhere like in ‘Nightingale,’ Ejaz Rahim writes about his endless cerebral occupation with embellishing his verses:

There are days

When the mind revels

In chasing metaphors

Like antelopes and gazelles

In fenced enclosures

Years go on, taking their toll, sparing none. The poet laureate appears to be dealing with his portion of the cost of living in his own determined style. He had a brain MRI, and that too finds mention in his poetry together with a take on Years:

Another year

Gone with the wind

Like a house of chaff

But every year

The wind blows colder

And digs deeper

Than before

Here is a beautiful book of poetry that must not go unnoticed. ‘There are few readers of English verse in our country,’ the poet once explained diffidently when asked where one can find a copy of his latest book of poetry. But one would like to go anywhere to get books that contain beautiful verses like those penned by Ejaz Rahim:

You may think

Times have changed

But beautiful eyes

Even now

Cause a ravage

When they blink

Published in Dawn, February 21st, 2016