Poetry with certain technical attributes

Bus aik harfay dilaraam hee naheen warna

Samastoun ko bohat shoro shar muyyasar hai

Yaqoob Khawar has baffled me. His poetry collection ‘Harfay Dilaraam’ is enigmatic, primal, incantatory, capricious, fabled, opinionated, extremely agreeable, and intensely unpredicted, in other words multi-faceted,

I read a few ‘ghazals’ and loved them, then read some more and loved them, and so on and so forth. But when I crossed a section of his ‘ghazals’, it turned out to be a clamorous and splendid, religious and material, celestial and humdrum dissonance of tones:

Aik jaanub kashtiyay jaan laykay main jaanay laga

Tub w oh darya dil se aankhoun ki taraf aanay laga

Jab saray rahay achanuk rubru hum aayay tu

Satpata kar kiyun har ek doojay se katraanay laga

Der tuk khamoush hee chaltay rahay ek simt hum

Es tarah hutch who mujay main us ko samjaanay laga

Aik muddat baad shub khawboun ki who bearish hui

Dashtay dil mein har kaheen sabza sa lehraanay laga

Sarkhushiyay wasl apni jaa haya apni jaga

Ishq akhar sharmageen shokhi se sharmaanay laga

This isn’t a poetry that shakes the reader courteously. It’s far too methodical and sedate. It’s like a buzz growing ceaselessly louder until the language rushes toward you like a swarm of fuming bees; yet also, at the same time, flows toward you with a syrupy flood of honey:

Mohabbat bhe zaroori aabo daana bhe zaroori tha

Wafa ki taazgi ko yeh bahana bhe zaroori tha

Paray parwaz kafi hai fazayay baykaran lekin

Woh chashmay muntazar woh aashyana bhe zaroori tha

Gharooray hosla mandi ki koi hud naheen taahum

Hayaatay bayamaan koi thakaana bhe zaroori tha

Main khakh zaad abhi tuk zameen pe rehta houn

Falak nasheen kabhi moqa milay tu aa jaana

Milan taqdeer se tha ab bicharna bhe moqaddar hai

Zara cee baat par acha naheen dilgeer ho jaana

Bohat qareeb hai dil se magar naheen milta

Yeh sochta houn who kia souch kar naheen milta

Kabhi na houn tu meray dar pe dastkain dey ga

Main jab bhe jayoun tu who apnay ghar naheen milta

While reading his dow ghazlays and shish ghazlays, here are some terms, phrases that arose during my first textual incursion into his poetry collection: caravan, potpourri, language-drunk and idea-drunk. Some readers of his ghazals may stand outside the text, just peering in. His text poses a reader’s test, making marks in the book, jotting some questions, underlining places where he feels intense emotions, folding down corners of the ‘ghazals’ he likes best and sometimes not even sure why.

If some of his poems confuse you, or its weird rhyming scheme has you baffled, still read on. Merely adhering fairly strictly to the rhyme-scheme rules does not make a good poetry. Opening couplet (‘matla’) sets up a scheme of rhyme–called ‘qafia’; and refrain, called ‘radif’. This scheme takes place in the second line of each succeeding couplet. That is, once a poet establishes the scheme, he becomes its slave. This is exactly what his ‘dow ghazlays’ and ‘shish ghazlays’ reflect. Watching him pull ‘qafia’-words out of his hat seems like rebellion of words.

This poetry collection is so rich and deft, restrained and sharp, uncommon and challenging, yet it is possible to say what this is actually about. It is highly personal and subjective. This is the kind of book that speaks for itself. Some verses shine like a necklace among stones and some have a different lustre in a dazzling seclusion.