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