SAYYAB 251a 'reactionary' English poet, although this may be due to the fact that
this is how Eliot was described by Luwis 'Awad, when he introduced him
to the Arabic-reading public. All the poems in this volume, except for the
last two, are about love: on the whole, they are fairly stereotyped romantic
poems.
Yet Sayyab seems to go beyond the general limitations of the romantic
experience in at least two poems. 'In the Ancient Market Place' and 'An
Ancient Song' reveal the poet's power of creating atmosphere by exploiting
the poetic potentialities of realistic details, unconventional imagery and
a daring use of language close to that in symbolist poetry, an incantatory use
of words which relies upon repetition and strong rhythm, together with a
certain complexity of structure which is an expression of a relatively complex
and modern sensibility. Of the two poems, 'In the Ancient Market Place' is
the less tightly organized and satisfying, but the description of the atmosphere
of the old market is masterly: it is night and all noises in the old market have
died down, except for the murmurs of passers-by, the footsteps of a stranger
and the sad moaning of the wind. In 'An Ancient Song' we find the poet
listening one evening to an old record of a love song in an outlying crowded
cafe", while his tired eyes 'watched faces, hands, feet and flames' and 'the
clock continued to strike, scornful of the noise within'. The echoes of the
long song 'recede, melt away, trembling like a distant sail on the waters'.
As the poet listens, his thoughts turn first to the inexplicable human tragedy
reflected in unhappy love, obviously the theme of the song, wondering:
Why should the hand of Fate
Let fall its shadow between two hearts?
then to his own private sorrow, his unfulfilled love, how he was forced to
part from his beloved and see her disappear from his vision as slowly as the
tune of this song. This leads him to think of the voice of the singer, long dead,
and the ancient recording. As he listens he pictures to himself the fair woman
singing: whose 'image rippled in the tunes like a shadow in a river, ruffled by
the breeze', and he is overwhelmed by thoughts of death and the passing of
time. This brings him naturally to the last section of the poem in which he
views all around him 'the faces, hands and feet' of the opening simply as
'particles of dust':
Particles of dust
Vibrate and dance in boredom.
In the music-charged atmosphere.
Particles of dust.
The young woman, like her lovers.
Particles of dust.^65