THE ROMANTICS 178Suffering their wounds patiently, their heads bowed down in shame.
Time has made them forget life's laughter and tears.
Has ridiculed their world, leaving them no hope...
Please do not ask me, lady. Can't you see that I am myself one of them?^164
Because of his essentially passionate apprehension of reality Abu Risha
manages, at his best, to write political and nationalist poems of a high degree
of complexity, in which many disparate experiences are unified and fused
together in the heat of his passion. For instance, in his poem 'The New Year'
(1959)I6S the poet draws an ironic contrast between the messages of a
Happy New Year on the cards displayed in his room and his mood of depres-
sion on New Year's Eve, when he finds himself at midnight sitting alone in
his room, drowning his sorrows in drink, and looking back in grief and
bitterness on the past ten years of his life. But the poem is not only about
the destructive effect of time on the poet's personal life: it is not simply a
poem of individual or private sorrow. The tragedy of his country and of the
whole Arab world is present, forming an integral part of the poet's mood.
So while it remains an intensely personal experience, the poem is also a
national or political utterance.
An even clearer instance of this complexity can be seen in his poem on the
'Eagle'. Here the poem ostensibly describes in vivid and moving terms the last
moments in the life of an aged eagle, an image which for a long time had
been haunting the poet's imagination, judging by its occurrence in at least
three of his earlier poems, but which is given its most satisfactory expression
in this poem.^166 Hungry and weak, the eagle is too powerless to fly to the
summits as was its wont, but enraged at being pushed about by inferior birds
that dwell in the lowlands it summons just enough strength and courage to
make one final leap to the top of the mountain, thus putting an honourable
and dignified end to its life. But in the final line of the poem, the poet makes
an identification between himself and the bird, thereby making the poem
appear to be as much about the poet himself as about the bird. And on
closer reading one discovers that the poem has a further dimension: it is also
about the poet's own country, whose symbol is the eagle. Thus the three levels
on which the poem operates are tightly and organically interrelated; there
is nothing forced or contrived here. We have at one and the same time a
poem about nature, a poem about the poet's personal experience and a
political poem. Needless to say this mode of political expression is beyond
the reach of neoclassical poetry.