NEOCLASSICISM 24Wasted by grief, worn out by lack of sleep,
I am blinded by curtains of care.
Neither will the darkness of night pass,
Nor is the bright morning to be expected.
There is no companion to listen to my complaint,
No news to come, no figure to pass my way.
(Here I am) between the walls and behind a door securely bolted.
Which creaked as soon as the jailer began to open it,
Pacing up and down he is outside.
But at the slightest sound I make he halts.
Whenever I turn to do a thing darkness says to me-
Hold it, do not move.
I grope my way, looking for what I want,But neither do I find the object of my search.
Nor does my soul find its repose.
Darkness without a single star,Broken only by the fire of my breath.
So be patient, my soul, till you attain your desire,
For good patience is the key to success.
We are indeed no more than breaths which are spent,
And man is a prisoner of Fate, wherever he may be. (i, 192—3)
This poem, in fact, is an admirable illustration of Barudi's poetic powers, of
his ability to bring about a true marriage between the new and the old. The
feelings of grief, anxiety, isolation and loneliness, the seemingly endless
night in the darkness of the prison cell are all there. The poet's concrete situa-
tion is very well realized, partly by the mention of some realistic details: the
jailor pacing up and down outside; the creaking door of the cell. The feeling
of utter disappointment as the result of the failure of the poet's hopes and
aspirations did not preclude his anger and even rage expressed in the image
of the fiery breath. Here are no cliches, no facile conventional phraseology;
on the contrary, there is much originality in the imagery, of being blinded
by curtains of care, or of darkness without a single star being broken only by
the fire of the poet's breath. Yet, towards the end of the poem, when he
exhorts himself to be patient, the poet resorts to typical traditional general-
izations, and he concludes his poem with pious thoughts, the kind of senti-
ments one associates with classical Arabic gnomic and moralistic verse. At first
sight there seems to be some discordance between the individuality and
concreteness of the experience as expressed in the main body of the poem
and the easy generalizations of the conclusion. But on closer examination
one realizes that far from being independent aphorisms loosely strung on to
the poem the following thoughts:
We are indeed no more than breaths which are spent.
And man is a prisoner of Fate, wherever he may be