Visioned Summits
SYED AMEERUDDIN'S POETRY
Syed Ameeruddin combines the flash of Swinburnean rhetoric with cabalistic devices of syntax and imagery. He is dogmatic with the pantheistic vitalism 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 vnlyfor a time. We are part of the incanmte cosmos,part of the earth. Blood is part of the sea. There is nothing in us alone. He revels in his poem "Pilgrimage":
Home of course is sweet and serene
For those who discover symphonies of heart:
Home is a place where your heart belongs.
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.In his poem "Carrion Carnage" - he cries:
How long this bewildered humanity
To be trapped in such a twilight of melancholy
'Who will deliver these perplexed people
Is there any justice on this volcanic earth
Religion I The very word is nauseating
Then, where is god's benevolence ?
But the Question is, whose God? ?
In another poem "Ambiguity" - he questions:
then,what is Nirvana ?
Reflecting on the smoky Cayers
Of gloom and solace,
And Seeing -
Meaning in ambiguity.
Syed's conception of poetry is at one time inner splendour: another time a passion for encountering and experimenting with the outer realities of life - around him. A poet is a tower of words and Syedplays poetic billiards with words. In his poem "Life's enigma":
All existence
Is being, becoming and withering
And tension between
Imagination and experience.
Ameeruddin is a realist of the senses. The two realities,the earth and the soul, are firm in hisown. The winding galleries of his mind unfurl strange tunes. There is verbal magic in his verses. Green echoes haunt him like a passion. He feels poetry like fire in his hands. He replaces meanings by suggestions. Unsuspected impulses and unfathomable fears throb and explode. In his poem "Whispers of beyond" - he echoes :
"With frozen whispers of beyond
Tfte beyond of the diminishing Cife4ine of tights
I drown in miraged rhapsodies
All your memories a fabricated shadow
Hanging on the ornamental borders of illution
Like a spectrum returning to its broken prism.
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.
Who are we ?
What are we ?
Why are we ?
What is world to Vniverse ?
- Syed asks vehemently.
He feels Man is in process of becoming his own providence, his own cataclysm, his own saviour,his own invading horde of Martians.
In his poem "Wounded Dawn" he laments :
"Unhealed wounds sigh a pain
All through the rain blashed night.
Tears terminate to volcanic upsurge -
Man in ftames - inflames man
Smoke, explosion, annihilation
And smithereen pieces of stinging flesh -
...................................................
The wounded dawn chores the unsung song.
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. On the whole, there is a mingling of Time past, Time present, and Time Future. In "Whispers of beyond" - he says:
Time an enchanting incantation
Reverberates its way transcending into
The marshlands of frozen fossils
To be distilled in the dar^crucibles of past.
In my talks to University and poets audience all over the world, I always stressed a poet's mission - a divine mission : "when chaos is everywhere, the poet cannot stay out of this turbulence. The poet's part in this Universal drama is really monumental, magnificient. New frontiers, new horizons,new est vistas of space grow so catalytic that the days he lisped on green grass and pure passion are gone. The poet has to raise his mind and its piercing eyes into the white radiance of super realities. The present day poet must vision and prevision the mathematics of futurity. He must crush and crash eternity in his verses."
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 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 of Khaleel 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 crumbting staircase to oblivion -
A new day breads 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 " Eloquent Serenade " -The poem has epic dimensions. He communes with himself - 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 subjective responses.
Syed wants to come out of his earlier nostalgic sentiments :
No, I will not die in your memories
Nor see my face through
The mangredsunlight in your eyes.
I will walk
Into the alphabetic anarchy of stars
March ing into the rebellious night
Ahead, into the azure eyes of futurity.
Syed clearly sets his future manifesto in the above lines - which will certainly take him to the phase of visioned summits. In the same poem -Syed bursts out with highly unconventional, surrealistic confessions :
I will not die in these
paths of nothingness
I shall not be buried In these sullen graveyards
My body shall not be left
For pastures of redemption
My redemption is here,
When I die, I am redeemed
Then, he gives echo to his poetic pride :
A poet never dies,he goes on forever.
No grave can bury him.
No monument can confine him.
A poet is for All times, and for All climes
As a realist - with an existentialists quest - he questions the very existence of human life :
what is this enigma, after all !
Bottoming and peaking encounters
Reaped distresses and harbouring longings
Haze and Maze of Birth, corpulation, death'
Then ends the poem - as a master artist in a non-chalant way :
All is just a blooming boomerang
and a syllabled ding-dong song.
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.
'Visioned Summit' - is his master piece poem. Syed has proved that, he is the Bard of the Far Beyond,with his mesmerising 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. This poem establishes the " Oneness of Reality comprising the existential base and flowering of consciousness culminating in Ananda - Supreme bliss :
Thus, I visioned summits of illumined peaks
Of benign Nirvana,Aham Brahman,Anal Huq.
And touched a moment eternal
Breathing the diinne light of bliss -
The Sat - Chit -Ananda !
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 lightnings from his eternal mind. Expanded moment 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
VISIONED SUMMITS
I am yet to explore
The frontiers of longest pilgrimage
Of life's vast vicissitudes.
The unsolved dazzling enigmas
The mysterious spiraling paths
Of passion and peace.
Sliced silences
And broken whispers
frozen murmurings
And shimmering shrieks
Phenomenal recurrences
Of exits and entrances
Enactment of farces multitudinous
The beginning, ripening and the kerneling.
Clasping ecstasies
Throbbing for mix.
Miraged rhapsodies
Longing to be harboured.
Churning of the. base and apex
To the illumined peaks.
The eye of the cyclone
Has centred in my innerworld
To unravel the mystery
That hovers around me.
I am crest fallen,
Vanquished and disillusioned.
With my vain adventures
Of mundane exploration.
Restlessness reverberates
Into a frenzied trance
Darkness Dwindles to drench
In the twilight dawn.
Unknown galaxies syllabled
To sprawling spheres
Unheard melodies
In ogerish skies bewildered
And mute symphonies
In ogling oceans aghast.
Atlast, my search
Has become a quest beyond
A resounding voyage
Into the realm of light,
To unfathom the eerie secrecies
And revered revelations.
from my flights
Through darting darkness
I started moving
Into the blazy nothings -
Pouring all the tornadoes
Of ageless thoughts from the abyss
Of my dismal mind.
My' Mahaprasthan' passes through
The valley of sorrow,
Mountain of joy
And verdant woods
Of metaphysical maze,
Into the abyss of peace
To reach the endless
Ocean of tight,
Love and beauty
Realising the Radiating syndromes
Which brought me into life,
And life into me.
Thus, I crossed
The pulverising paths
Of flesh, Philosophy
And panicky poise
And reached the haloing goal
Of my zvhirly voyage,
Racing to orgasm
Of spicy source
To visualise
The mimble orchestra
Of delightful nimbus.
Lightening flashed in me
Racing my rinds
With tremoric lips, I quivered:
Master! Is this the ocean of tight!
Master! Is this the radiance of beyond
At that mind blowing, soul splashing
Ecstatic moment of engulfing blues
And flames of Brilliant hues,
The vibrant divine within me Blazes :
La Ilaha llial Laha!
Salam I Salam I Salam I
Peace Be withyou!
My crimson Being further sparkles:
Ekam Eva Advitiyam Brahman I
Oml Shantil Shantil Shantil
Thus, I visioned
Summits of illumined peaks
Of Begin 'Nirvana
Aham Brahman, Anal Haq,
And touched a moment eternal
Breathing the divine light of bliss -
The Sat - Chit -Ananda !
'Dark night reaches its dawn
Midnight tremor merges into mellowness
The trance comes to a poise
Fragrance of the ecstatic dream
Remain afresh, lingering and,
Lilting down the memory lane
reminding the magnificient moon
Of 'Buddha Purnima ' -
"Only those return to 'Eternity
Who on earth seek out Eternity"
( Book Description - Visioned Summits - Published by -International Poets Academy - Chennai in 1995 - 21 Poems in 160 Pages )