NEOCLASSICISM 66cular, he says, must first face the grim reality of their present situation before
they can begin to reform:
Nations strive hard while we idly play...
And live like water moss by the bank.
Parasites on life, now floating, now sinking (i,203).Jawahiri is the political poet par excellence. What is unique about his mature
political poetry is that while the form is obviously classical and the diction is
at times archaic, the degree and kind of political consciousness and the fer-
vour of the revolutionary impulse are thoroughly modem. That is why he is
fully accepted by the neoclassicists as one of them while even extreme
modernists claim him as their mentor. His poetry is highly charged with
emotion, and the explosive nature of his violent and often original imagery
has an almost physical impact on the reader, with the result that the poet's
anger at social injustice, political corruption and the degradation of man
becomes infectious and reaches a degree of intensity that is at times truly
terrifying. Listen to him giving vent to his grief and anger in his powerfully
moving elegy on his brother, who was brutally killed during a demonstration
held in Baghdad to protest against the Portsmouth Treaty in 1947 ('My
Brother Ja'far' (U39)):
It is not fancy what I say, my brother.
For he who has to take revenge is always awake; he never dreams.
But inspired by my patient endurance
For sometimes inspiration can reveal what is hidden in the future
I see the heavens without stars, but lit up with red blood
And a rope, rising like a ladder, on which to climb up from the earth;
Whoever reaches out to cut it has his hand chopped off
By a figure rising from the huge corpses around, where glory is even
more huge.
And I see a hand stretching beyond the veil, writing on the horizon
A generation gone and a generation come
[And] before them [rose] an enkindled flame.or listen to the opening lines of his well-known poem 'Descend, Darkness',
which by its repetition and diction has an effect analogous to that of magical
imprecation or curses (U49):
Descend, darkness and fog, and clouds without rain,
Burning smoke of conscience and torture, descend.
Woe and destruction, descend upon these who defend their own
destruction.
Punishment and retaliation upon the builders of their own tombs