Visions Of Deliverance
POETRY SYED AMEERUDDIN...
Syed Ameeruddin combines the flash of Swinburnean rhetoric with cabalistic devices of syntax and imagery. He is dogmatic with the pantheistic tdtalism of D.H. Lawrence. In Ameeruddin's poetry creativity is perpetuated by ecstatic bliss. He feels the magnificent 'here' and 'now' of life in the flesh of ours and ours alone and ours only for a time. We are part of the incarnate cosmos, part of the earth. Blood is part of the sea. There is nothing in us alone. He revels in his poem "A Prayer for my Grandson".
Alas!
All the values of -
Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and Ram,
Have ended in a dreadful fiasco.
And beleagueringly boomeranged on Man
To create fissures of fury
And disenchantment, to inflict
A deluge of-
Rambling rubbles of debris
And decomposed -Dragony pieces of human flesh.
Ameeruddin feels that, mind is the glitter of sun on the surface of existence. Earth is the bed in which the slow copulation of decay is consummated. Syed plunges into his own interior depths, a going beyond himself, an emptying of himself - an entry into the naked ground beneath all the visible masks of existence. And the result is, he combines a single moment with centuries, naturalism with profundity, prose rhythms with poetic excellences. As such, he rebels against injustice, the parliament of everydayness, the wicked voyager in virtues seas, the dictatorship of wild regimes, the sway wild flesh and bone, the sweat of bloody atrocities. In one of his poems, heralding the New Millennium -he cries :
The beginning -
Of the New Millennium
Witnessed -
The volcanic human infernos
Of startled shattered
World trade fair peaks,
Thundering tribulations
Sneaking Afganisthan
Bosnian, Somalian heaps -
Of Hissing human ashes
The bereaved rubbles -
Of the battered Baghdad.
And the eternal -
Tigress in tears of blood...
In Syed Ameeruddin's poetry vignettes of everydayness sparkle deliriumed excellences. Dark unfathomed secrecies blaze as discoveries. Common dissents are revered as revelations. Feelings flame as images. Millions of years of heritage and culture flower into magic and profundity. In one of his poem - he says :
Who are you my little angel!
What is this savagery -
At the threshold of this New century?
There is holocaust -
In every heart!
There is shimmering sham -
In every soul!
What lessons -
Of sanity and oneness of Man
We can impart -To our generations to come?
In the contemporary Parnassian world Syed Ameeruddin has emerged as an unique phenomenon for his poetic mission, spiritual vision, vibrating dynamism, symphonic symbolism, complex imagery and above all for his humanitarian and metaphysical concerns. Syed feels that, poets are the conscience -keepers of their times and have a role to play in the maintenance of peace and harmony in the society. Further, Syed also feels - "A poet exists from moment to moment and he justifies every moment he lives''. Syed's is an erratic wisdom. His contradictions are his poetic excellences. Syed's poetry is the confrontation of his whole being with Reality - a basic struggle of the soul, mind and body to comprehend life, to loving order to chaos, and by will and insight to create communicable verbal forms for the delight of mankind.
At times Syed's poetry is highly subjective and lyrical. He celebrates love in the convention of Kalidasa - and some times in the vibrant vicissitudes ofKhaleel Gibran. His poem "A New Love" is unrivaled in love poetry :
When we sat face to face
We are like the waves
Gently marching towards the eye of the storm
When we close our eyes We descend
The crumbling staircase to oblivion -
A new day breaks from visual rhapsody
A gesture. A whisper. A new dawn dances.
Syed's talents as a master poet are vividly revealed in his long poem "A Prayer for my Grandson" - the poem has epic dimensions. He communes with himself - in the form of - addressing his Grandson - raging beneath tranquil everydayness. His existential crisis and surrealistic ramblings are brought to the fore. He very sensitively capsules the happenings of his time with his own subject responses :
You are a pilgrim -
With infinite goals with
A mellowed, message of-
"Share Joy! -
Share Sorrow ! -
Share Nature!" -
To bring radiating brilliance •
Into the shrunken ghostly faces -
Of withering Mankind
And to blow -
The titanic trumpet
Of gurgling gospel -
Of life without tears
To plant rustic simplicity -
Of shimmering smiles
To embrace life, nature and cosmos
As-
One Entity,
One Creation,
One Divinity!
Going beyond Rimbaud, Syed creates poem -illumination, a synthetic explosion of colour, emotion and perpetual movement. Like Blake, he merges spiritual vision and poetry, feeling the joy of being, the joy Supreme. His prophetic words must be felt - they are the living views of Universe, holding keys to eerie secrecies.
Visions of Deliverance - is his masterpiece poem, with an epical grandeur. Syed has proved that, he is the Bard of the Far Beyond, with his mesmerizing mission and munificent message. He is Arobindonian in his thought process and Tagorian in his mystic vicissitudes and Yeats like - in his transparent symbolism and exploding imagery. Blake like - in his metaphysical connotations and Dante like - in his divine dazzling visions. This poem explores the visions of -'here, here-after and ever-after'. This poem establishes the "Infinite reality" comprising the existential base and flowering of consciousness culminating into the eternal - 'Here After'-the eternal 'realm of resplendent'. Further, mesmerizingly - envisions the souls journey from the dark - to the delectable destiny of - 'The Ever After' -with the ONE - the 'Eternal light' - lilting, in 'Ananda'. The Supreme Btiss :
The resplendent radiance
Of ever after and hereafter -
The realization of supreme fulfillment -
The Moksha ! The Magfirat! The Nirvana !
The blow of"Soor"! The Drumbeat!
The Shriek of Shankh !
Deliverence I Deliverence ! Deliverence !
Dr. Prem Verma, a well-known critic and a senior professor from Delhi University - in her analysis of Syed's recent collection of poems - 'Visions of Deliverence' - very judiciously sums up - Syed's poetry - as "The Earthly and the Ethereal". Dr. Prem Verma writes :
"Syed Ameeruddin's 'Visions of Deliverence' comes across - as a work of many facets ranging from the downright sensuous to the purely mystic and the spiritual. In this book the earthly and the ethereal, or the mundane and the spiritual, combine with ease and fluidity, the one merging into the other so imperceptibly that it is impossible to demarcate where one begins and the other ends.
In this collection, there are a number of fascinating love poems - consists of what are, prima facia, love poems, but the love that the poet speaks of is a love that exists on various levels of consciousness. The poem 'Broken whispers' begins : "you are away now, somewhere beyond" and then reminiscing about a past that "lies smothered / On the reverberating shores of time", sets the tone of the whole book by combining the sensuous with the sublime.
In many of the poems even the line between waking and dreaming is as blurred as that between physical and spiritual love. When one reads :
My love, come and wait for me
At the duskfall on a lovelorn shore,
Where twilight breaks
On a fevered evening
To celebrate our pure love
From everlasting to everlasting
Winding through scissoring
Blue seascapes and purple skyscapes,
To touch the golden dawn of eternity
In the fleeting flickers of drowsy dusk.
Poem : 'Love Song'.
It begins like any other love poem but long before the end of the stanza we are left with asking - is it physical love or is it a spiritual love that the poet is talking about. It is this unique mingling of the earthly and the sublime, of the momentary with the eternal, of the sensual with the mystical, that makes Syed Ameeruddin }s poetry different and gripping.
This questioning on the part of the reader may also be the result of the way Ameeruddin plays with the language. It does not take him long to switch over from the concrete to the abstract, from the transient to the intransient, from one experience to the "Cycling and recycling" of experience. A number of the poems begin with the voice of the lover talking to his beloved, but by the end the speaker is sounding more like a sage.
There are however poems where he allows pure physical love,full of eroticism to take center stage, like:
In that trance of romantic rhapsody
Suddenly, you twisted tantalizingly
With the twists and wriggles of a fitful snake -
And enclosed my body swarming
I kissed you on the neck
And tickled your hard nipples - in that
Honey splashing, nectar mood -
In your ecstasy, you possessed me hard to yourself
To touch the dizzy zeniths of exotic heights;
At that, I entered you as the evening sun
Enters into the dusky deep ocean.
-Poem : 'Love Times'
This is perhaps one of the few poems where the physical passion seems to take over completely while drowning out the more sublime aspects of love, but in most of the other poems, balance (however delicate) is maintained, by talking about souls and rebirths, eternity and timelessness.
Even the poems that focus on relationships, Being written for specific people on specific occasions, are not entirely devoid of the spiritual mysticism that seems to permeate the volume, The "Birthday Song - For my son..." begins like a normal celebratory poem in the first stanza but then moves into the realm of timelessness and eternity as it proceeds. He begins by telling us how his dreams became "a delectable reality" when the son was born, but goes on to say "I am part of the galaxy" and he feels he is linked to Eternity.
And thus sparkles my dream Songs
Into the timeless infinitum
Through our little Titan
The light, the Delight
The bliss, The Blessings
Of the sacred - SYED -
The spiritual offspring -
Our Flesh, Spirit and Blood - the shinning Star
of New Millennium
The Jewel - the 'AMEEN'....
The poem written for his grandson on the other hand does not show this sort of a movement. On the contrary, it becomes more generalized when it takes on the form of a commentary on good and evil. The "Drumbeats of eDampatya' written for his wife is, however, a perfect fusion of the single and the universal, of love and spirituality, of the earthy and the ethereal. It has, in my opinion, just the right mixture, the right balance, and makes for a beautiful poem.
Going back to his generalization of good and evil, it can be noticed that Ameeruddin seems fond of making this sort of commentary. This same aspect dominates his poems on the "New Year" and one of his classic poem "My India". To give an example I quote from "New Year".
Years come, Years go,
Lets celebrate this New Year
With a resolve to harness
The beast in Man and to retain
The smile on every Human Face.
I do not wish to spend too much time on these poems and just, I would like to point out in passing that the theme of carnage, bloodshed and violence is so prominent in the poet's mind that it succeeds in encroaching even where we least expect it. The two versions of "My India" are like crying out loud where the poet bemoans the new India where "sinister looks" have taken away "the smiles from innocent faces" and instead of the "grandeur" and peace of the old India there are "blownup automobiles", "shattered houses" and" hijacked victims" and the air is full of "shrieks of pain" and shouts of crime". The "Godhra infernos" and the "Gujarat carnages" have successfully created "the stench/Of rotting flesh" where even the vultures are "Aghast / At this nauseating / Excess of human stink".
The theme has seeped into the poet's soul to the extent that in "A Prayer - for my Grandson..." where the mood should have been celebratory, he talks of a New Millennium.
Celebrating the mutilations
Of horific holocausts
The environment gets engulfed in gloom as the poet recalls how religious differences have created "fissures of fury" resulting in "A deluge of rambling rubbles ofdebris/and decomposed dragony pieces of human flesh".
I have felt the necessity to discuss this briefly as I wish to point out that this aspect of his poetry becomes so strong that it undermines the ethereal content of his poems that is so predominant otherwise.
The title poem "Visions of Deliverance" begins with the theme of "tumultuous devastation" but is allowed to run underground after a while, as it is, after all a Vision of Deliverance. The poem reads like one of those "near death experiences".
Having painted a picture of misery and unhappiness in the first five stanzas of the poem he goes on to talk of a time:
When the soul is freed
From the cozy cage
Of myopic craze
And
Man is catapulted
To the void of voids.
When the soul is catapulted to "the center of the still center" it meanders on its way.
Each seeping soul
Is an enchantment
Bewildered and baffled
In a blissful reverie
Singing seismic symphonies
In sephulcre silence
From womb to tomb
From dust to bloom -
Denoting the predicament;
'Everlasting to everlasting'.
The Visions of Deliverance however does not end there. Having traced the journey of the soul from the womb to tomb, he goes beyond where the souls encounter "twin tunnels" at the "beacon light". The dark and despicable souls are "crushed and crashed" in an "abysmal sea of fire" and "tortured to molten pieces". He envisions these souls being punished, not in an everlasting fire, but "in fumes" where they are;
Drifted into layers within layers
Of flames- multidimensional
Till a space of timeless time -
Till - the souls are crystalled and crafted
Moulded and shaped - in molten lava
To the pristine peaks of purity
And then finally bathed
In the mellowed flames of green
And made to wait in repentance
To receive the radiance
To grace of eternal light
To experience the eternity
And the blissful - eternal bounty.
Having told us about the evil souls plight he goes in to follow the other souls who enter the second tunnel. They are in ecstasy bathed in "a spectacular panorama of light". These souls have attained the ultimate enlightenment or what the poet calls "Deliverance". The poet wakes up from his vision to discover it was a dream. But what makes it so fascinating is the concept of the bad souls being "purified" and not as many people believe, in an everlasting hell. It is interesting to note that this is the same concept that is offered by writers like Melvin More in his 'Where God Lives' and James Van Praagh in 'Reaching to Heaven'. In this respect I can put Ameeruddin on the plane of a guru -'a mellowed mystic' - who has had a vision of the afterlife and of deliverance, not only for himself, but for all of us".
Syed is a poet with a difference. He is unique in his poetic craftsmanship. There is splendour and lyrical grandeur in his verses. Creative energy, freshness of style, metaphysical force, characterize his poetic masterpieces. The collapse of ideals, the fleeting frontiers between known and unknown make him restless, and verses strike lightning's from his eternal mind. Expanded moments are opened and Syed descends into these moments. Eruptions happen, loosening poetry from its moorings and taking new directions. Hence, poetry to Syed is a revelation, exploration, discovery and illumination - its values extended to eternity.
Ameeruddin is primarily a poet of social, metaphysical, spiritual and humanitarian concerns and philosophical encounters to unravel the seeming realities of life. He uses his imagery and symbolism with zest and dexterity. His style is simple, direct, lucid and lilting. His expression is exquisite, forceful and facile. However, Syed emerges as a poet of many excellences, with his magical and vibrant verses. A serious observer of his poetry will find in him a happy confluence of thought profundity, verbal ecstasy, visual beauty and imagistic delicacy.
Ameeruddin }s poetry explores the broad range of human thought and experience, that provoke, inform, illuminate and entertain. He achieves an apocalyptic union of subject and object, earth, the inner psyche and heaven. In this dark night of metaphysical quest, he establishes a self co-extensive with the universe. As such, his poetry sparkle with delight, ring with wonder, and shimmer deepest awe. On this account, he is a rare phenomenon in the contemporary field of world poetry today.
KRISHNA SRINIVAS
POEM
VISIONS Of DELIVERANCE
What is this magnificent Extravagance,
Of tumultuous devastations
The hoary diadems
And eerie furies.
The enraged alien
Alphabetic acrobats
The frozen lava
In labyrinthine lilts,
The dark ebony spheres
Of phallic deliriums.
'What is this cluster
Of hurricane clouds,
The shimmering shrieks
Of smithereen souls
The cyclonic unleash
Of kenneled thunders
The churny gurgle
Of roaring volcanoes
The shivering peaks
And scissoring slopes
The trembling rills
And terrified oceans.
What is this rottening riot of glee!
Sind stinging stains of spree
The splash of spirits on fumes ablaze
The rhythmic plethora
Of edited exists
The fractured joys
And juried raptures
The puerile play
Of flamy traumatic force
The f[asft of purple woes
In delirious souls
What is this vast vista
Of mind-blowing tornado.
The tangled mesh
Of frenz ied flesh
The vibrant aftermath
Of vivacious vagrancy
The squeezing life
And melting metamorphosis
The aspen pantomime
Of rainbow shades
The seeking escapades
In epicentre of infernos.
What is this voyage?
from lone to lone
from ethereal slumber
To tyrannous trance
Beyond the hissy hues
Of heathenly darks
beyond the seeping shores
Of luscious light
Beyond the naked world
Of rickety reach
Beyond the darkness deeped
'Doors of Tombs abysmal.
When the soul is freed
From the cozy cage
Of myopic craze
Man is catapult
To the void of voids.
He is not the intellect
He introspected
Die is not the self -
He lived
He is not the thought -
He harboured.
All hussy whispers
Of esoteric bounds - lost
All fuming foams
Of fidgety flesh - annulled
All criss - crossing souls
In perpetuating peril
Booming their blurry way
To the centre of the still centre.
The smoky glare sinks
Into meandering mansions
Beyond -far Beyond
The timeless frontiers
Roaring - Reverberating
Neti... Neti... Neti....
"Each seeping soul
Is an enchantment,
Bewildered and baffled
In a blissful reverie
Singing seismic symphonies
In sephulcre silence
from womb to tomb
from dust and bloom -
Denoting the predicament :
"Everlasting to everlasting'.
This phenomenon
Is hazy and smoky -
Each soul must chart
Its fleverecent flight - alone
And voyage its way
To dwindling tips and downs
Through its scintillating strength
And fascinating filtery faltings
Meandering seeded worlds
Seeded firmaments
And orbiting nebulae endless.
The spectacular odyssey
Of the souls in multitude
Enters - layers of dark
Waves above the waves
Ripples within the ripples
In dreadful ocean
Of dark - dark - dark -
And reaches a halt
before the tantalizing
Beacon light - the twin tunnels...
Dark and despicable souls
Drowned in hatred and ignorance
Led by the fire flashing smithies
Into the abysmal sea of fire
Then the souls are crushed
To be crushed and crashed
And tortured to molten pieces
As dazzling splinters of fire balls.
These voluptuous souls
In aghast - in repentance
further orbited in the fuming
Whirpools of torrential furies...
Fire, Fire, Fire - everywhere
Red fire, Blue fire, Qreen fire
An agonizing spectacle of fire
A devastating deluge of fire
In this firmament of floods of fire
The fire breathing smithies
In the delirium of gushing fire
Busy in shevelling,
Shattering and shafting
The black souls - heathen bound
Into the vicarious volcanoes
Of flamboyant flames of doom.
Thus these souls in fumes
Drifted into layers within layers
Of flames - multidimensional
Till a space of timeless time
Till - the souls are crystalled and crafted
Moulded and shaped - in molten lava
To the pristine peafe of purity.
And then finally bathed
In the mellowed flames of green
And made to wait in repentance
To receive the radiance
The grace of eternal light
To experience the eternity
And the blissful - eternal bounty.
Into the other tunnel - resplendent
Driven the shimmering souls
That are true and righteous
By the messengers of light
In bright magnificent wings...
Here the souls in bellowing ecstasy
Incited in trance to see the sparkles of light.
Light - Light - Light - everywhere
The light blue, the light green,
the light white...
All a spectacular panorama of light
A tightening reverie.
An enticing illumination.
A tune of welcome - to the bliss of here - after.
Thus, the souls of purple deeds
Received and traversed - through
Labyrinthine vicissitudes of light...
Light upon light - Light within light
Into the exalted layers,
Of munificence of light
Till the silvery souls -
Reached the gardens of 'Eternal Homes'
Under which - lilting icy rivers flow
This is the delectable destiny - ever after
Only to be with ONE, The Eternal light
Experiencing the eternal Bliss
The Sat - Chit - Ananda -
Salam - Salam - Salam -
The peace of Eternal Bounty
The resplendent radiance
Of Ever after and Here after -
The realization of Supreme fulfilment -
The Molina ! The Maqfirat! The Nirvana I
The blow of 'Soor'!
The Drumbeat !
The Shriek of Shankh !
Deliverance ! Deliverance ! Deliverance !
* * *
When I opened my eyes
From my throttled dream
My crimson eyelids
Gleam rambling reflections
Of the life - 'Here After'
Aghast! Crestfallen! Dumb-struck
Just looked at the glitter
Of the gurgling galaxy
And saw the light
That bubbles myriad star
And ascends on tipsy toes...
The azure stairs
Lighting the peaks
Of spheres with torn tapers
Telling the tale
Of flesh and guilt...
Transience of life
Transmigration of soul -
Reminding the moment
Of inevitable - "Big Bang'
Fana ! Fana ! Fana I
Into the eternal - 'Here After'
The eternal realm of resplendent.
( Book Description - Visions Of Deleverance - Published by - International Poets Academy - Chennai - in 2006 - ( ISBN 81-900653-2-7 ) - 30 Poems in 235 Pages )