LITTLE SONGS

Love sonnets
Of Mohammed Fakhruddin

By Patricia Prime (Auckland, New Zealand)

     The sonnet or “little song” is a poem of fourteen lines, usually rhymed, usually written in iambic pentameter; a song usurped by ideas.

     A sonnet often presents an argument, perhaps a romantic plea in the guise of a legal brief.  But it may also contain a description of a scene, or a meditation, or a miniature story, or a portrait.  The rhyme scheme and stanza breaks (if any) often determine the structure of the thoughts.

     In English there are two principal kinds of sonnet: the Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean (or English).  They are characterized by different rhyme schemes and different organizing principles.

     The Petrarchan sonnet, named after the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch, rhymes abbaabba in its first eight lines (the octave) and variously in the last six (the sestet): cdcdcd, or variations of this form.  The Petrarchan sonnet has a two-part structure; the break between octave and sestet is called the volta, or turning point.  In English this sonnet form is difficult because of the rhyming demands (four different a rhymes, four b rhymes, and so on).

     The Shakespearean sonnet, named after William Shakespeare, rhymes abab cdcd efef gg.  Its structure is four-part, based on three quatrains and a couplet.  The rhyme is easier, and there are several possible turning points (although the crux is usually reached with the final couplet, which often moralizes or generalizes).

     A less common sonnet form, the Spensarian, named after Edmund Spenser, rhymes ababbcbccdcdee.

     Of the two principal sonnets, Mohammed Fakhruddin chooses the Shakespearian.  As we can see in Sonnet 1, his rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg: delight, rose, plight, repose, desire, fairyland, fire, command, dreams, interact, seems, fact, mind, blind.  With the final couplet acting as the coda, or summary of the poem: 

Sweet memories are fathomless delight:
My dried-out heart blooms like a desert rose.
I live. I die!  Forgotten dear plight:
My flesh and mind refined a lost repose
My mind surveys the woodlands of desire
Heart tranquility in a fairyland
Imagination leaps, as if on fire.
Sleep shines! I wake.  Hear my love’s command.
This is no limitation, and my dreams
Which, like volcanic floods, so interact
That all cascades before them nothing seems
To question my delight, this is a fact.
But dreams are facts called phantoms of the mind.
The heart is self-deceived, and love is blind. 

     The poet here is reliving those precious times when he was in love, but now his heart is as dry as a desert rose.  The reality is that love fades over time and can only be recalled in tranquility.  The closing couplet sums up the argument of the sonnet by telling us that dreams are nothing but phantoms and we are deceived into thinking it can be otherwise.

     Think of how much is said in these last two lines.  With a few spare “brush strokes” the poet creates a scene: dreams, phantoms, the mind, the heart, the blindness of love.  It is the sparseness of the poem that makes it possible for the poet’s memories to be the central part of the sonnet and to carry the weight of the poet’s vision.

     Many of the sonnets are spontaneous: a breathless act.  Using a different rhyme scheme in Sonnet 3: aabbccddeeffgg, and the poem is, more or less, in rhyming couplets: 

There is a valley between high and low
And smooth-browed hills a place where I would go
By running crystal streams through pathless woods,
I walked there most in spring, when waking buds
And early flowers and the honeybee
Were sweet upon the air, delighting me,
At times, a songbird, warbling in the sky
Would break through mist and hover.  There was I.
Too strong, too deep, a joy with me alone
I walk alone as now, I walk; a stone
Shaped like a jewel hung above my heart!
It is a ruby.  Here it is.  My art
Encapsulated here; a thing of worth:
As jewels is not ordinary earth. 

     This sonnet is about the joy of being alone.  In the poem we have a moment in time: the moment when the poet realizes what is most dear to him.  One can infer the context: a solitary walk in a loved place.  The mystery of the scene suggests that we’re expecting something else to cause his joy.  In this case, it is the crystal stream, the flowers, the birds and the bee.  The stone above his heart is a jewel that holds all that is dear to him.

     Using a Shakespearean quatrain (abab) to begin Sonnet 6, then shifting to the pattern cdcd for the next four lines, and concluding efef gg, Fakhruddin seems to be picking what he needs for his rhyming schemes as he writes his verses. 
    
     However, he draws on these two great models, writing within the restraints of the rhyming forms: 
 
She listened to my fumbling speech with joy.
She stood breast high.  We bumbling boys, forlorn.
Seeing her coming, eager to employ
Awaking passion, hopeful in its dawn
She, like a lovely angel, heaven-born,
And we mere mortals groveling below
If we resented this, it showed as scorn
Pretending an indifference; although
Much angered by her smiles and azure mirth
She stood breast-high amongst us, we enslaved
As if she were an angel come to earth.
We hungered after her, not yet depraved
But captivated by awakening lust!
Ashes to ashes may be, dust to dust? 

     This sonnet brings together two concepts – one of memory and the other of realization that everything must perish – expanding our understanding of both. Fakhruddin is perhaps remembering schooldays and the joy and frustration of admiring a girl from a distance. Although he and his friends are in awe and admiration of the girl, they admit that they are hungry and lustful, like most young men.  The final couplet signifies that all flesh must turn to ashes and dust in the end.  This is a poem with much to be discovered – what does memory mean?  And the fact that man is always striving for something that is perfect?  I am not finished thinking about this sonnet.

     One advantage of the two principal rhyme schemes, the Petrarchan and the Shakespearian, is that their structures are neat and lyrical, easy to recall in the act of composition.  The poet is really free to devise any sort of arrangement that works for a particular sonnet.  Fakhruddin’s Sonnet 10, for example, consists of three quatrains, rhyming abbacddceffe and a “summing-up” couplet gg: 

Tomorrow, like today and yesterday
Life will surge forward like an endless breeze
Upon some arctic waste: I left to freeze
As if a frozen statue of this may.
Gone are the days and nights when I had time
To think of betterment and having fun;
I am pre-occupied, and have begun
To spurn the unobtainable sublime,
Regret!  What is it but a retrospect?
Remembered whilst our longings keep their power?
Anticipation!  If the present sour,
Can things to come be free of that defect?
I thank God for all will pass.  As all things do,
I too try out for happiness like you. 

     This is a narrative.  With a little thought we can construct a beginning, a middle, and an end.  Could this be, perhaps, an epic in the life of the poet?  One can easily imagine the persona in middle age, taking a tentative look back at the way he has lived his life.  That’s all.  Is this a retrospective of the poet’s defects?  We’re not told, nor do we need to be told.  The moment is in the “frozen statue” spurning the sublime.

     A group of related poems in sonnet form is called a sonnet cycle.  The sonnets may be loosely assembled (perhaps according to theme), or they may tell or imply a story.  Fakhruddin’s sonnets, although separate and sufficient in themselves, do make a kind of progression.  Love, romance and pleasure seem to propel Sonnets 11, 12, 13 and 14.  Here is 13, which speaks of the delight and joys of love, of perfect unity, something no-one can do without.  However, the final couplet punches home the message that false love will only cause the failure of love between men and women: 

If I am source of some delight to you,
As you are, all in all, joys to me,
Then no doubt we have solved the mystery
Of perfect unity none can undo.
Now time, which seems to separate, unites
And places, where we dwell, divide no more.
Natural law seems ended: Other law
Says days are no more days, nor night’s mere nights.
So we make use, each moment of our lives,
Of that within, which none can do without?
Love, when perfected, terminates all doubt.
It is for this each ailing true heart strives.
But what a failure comes to us if when
Love dies between false women and false men. 
 
     What can be more poetic than to make use of all the moments in one’s life?  And why is this?  Because a life is so brief that we need to take those moments to “stand and stare” and to discover what life is about.  As the bearer of a story, the poet connects the reader with time, life and the failure of that life if things between people are false.

     Sonnet 15 changes in theme from love to despair, as clouds gather on the horizon and the sun disappears.  All of nature seems to be in sympathy with the poet: wind, rain and darkness threaten him.  The animals retreat.  He is left alone, with no words to explain his plight: 

Clouds, gathering, pile up in fields of air.
The sun seems tethered to the earth, behind
Thick walls of cloud, creating deep despair!
As darkness gathers, making all things blind,
Unseen wind, howling circles Drenching rain
Threatens but does not come.  All things retreat
Into their nests or burrows, fearing pain;
And I am numb and frozen to my feet.
Yet my heart leaps: The hazard yet to come
Looms like a heaving ghost of massive weight,
The storm now breaks, and I am stricken dumb:
It is this power that I celebrate!
Caught up, I am thrown down.  I gasp for air . . .
To live! Or die! With no time for despair!

     The idea here catches my imagination and I think of all those unseen dangers awaiting us: the terrors of war, natural catastrophes, ill-health, economic worries.  I am open to this sonnet and am not disappointed with its concluding lines which help push the thoughts along and take the reader deeper into the experience.

     Sonnet 16 continues the theme of despair, as the poet writes, “Your infidelity torments me still.  / I do not know why I was so deceived.”  In Sonnet 17 the poet muses on anger, madness, loneliness and death.  In the face of hurtfulness, fire burns within him and all his desires are forgotten as he succumbs to lassitude and the thoughts of death: 

When deeply hurt, sometimes I wallow
In shallow water, leaping like a fish;
Strength vanishing, I then feel hollow;
Brittle, shattered, like a broken dish . . .
My anger spreads all over.  I go mad.
Wild fire burns within, and what I do
I do not know, nor know the good from bad,
Nor right from wrong, nor recognize the true
Time and again, I feel that I am damned,
Like jelly stones in concrete set in stone,
Hammered and broken, buried deep and rammed
Into a living bomb!  I am alone.
Desires, aims, and will, submit to death
And yet, though dead, I live, and still draw breath. 

     Sonnets 18, 19 and 20 draw the disparate themes to a conclusion, as Fakhruddin calls on poets of the world to join him in seeking the pure heart of a lover – “The goddess, Love,” for whom both the poet and others have “died.”  “The poems I recite and write,” the poet says in Sonnet 19, “I choose for beauty all can see.”  This shining beauty, this light, must be evidenced in each line the poet chooses to write.

     The final sonnet draws the conclusion that “Men of reason don’t fall in love” but, since life is not ideal, man’s heart will ever beat in rhythm with another’s heart, no matter what the cost.  “Love is divine,” he says, “love blooms to chime.”  There are many parallels and contrasts here.  Parallels of fidelity, inspiration, sensuality and passion, contrasts of emotional explosions, eruptions, idealism!

     I’m not sure that I have plumbed the depths of these many-faceted sonnets.  I am still mulling over many of them.  And as I do, I am aware that perhaps the sonnets can be read as the natural world vs. civilization – and the question of which will survive.  Do they compliment each other? Or is one destined to outlive the other.  The poet doesn’t explicitly say.  But if the poet leaves the outcome unclear, with the choice up to the reader, all the more reason for studying Fakhruddin’s poetry.

     Whatever kind of poetry the reader may prefer, these sonnets are a kind of way station – a place of maps, fuel, refreshment – on the journey towards understanding the sonnet form.  Their purpose is to lead the reader back to reading this most ingenious method of writing and to encourage the writer to venture forth on his or her own adventure with rhyme, rhythm and form.  The sonnets offer not a last work but directions along the way, signposts for the journey.

PATRICIA PRIME
42 FLANSHAW ROAD,
TE ATATU SOUTH,
AUCKLAND  8
NEW ZEALAND

Courtesy: Contemporay Vibes (English Quarterly),
Volume No.4, Issue No.15, April-June 2009

 

20 SONNETS OF MOHAMMED FAKHRUDDIN

By Dr. P. Raja and Dr. Rita Nath Keshari (Pondicherry, India)

With the kind permission of "Busy Bee Book of Contemporary Indian English Poetry" (Pondicherry, India), ISBN 978-81-87619-13-0, we reproduce here the research work by two of the great Indian poets and poetry critics, Dr. P. Raja and Dr. Rita Nath Keshari, written on Dr. Mohammed Fakhruddin’s 20 sonnets, one of the 17 Indian Contemporary Poets included in the volume, published in November, 2007.

    
20 Sonnets of Mohammed Fakhruddin

SONNET-1

Sweet memories are fathomless delight:
My dried-out heart blooms like a desert rose.
I live, I die! Forgotten dear plight:
My flesh and mind refined a lost repose
My mind surveys the woodlands of desire
Heart tranquility in a fairyland
Imagination leaps, as if on fire.
Sleep shines! I wake. Hear my love's command.
This is no limitation, and my dreams
Which, like volcanic floods, so interact
That, all cascades before them nothing seems
To question my delight which is a fact.
But dreams are facts called phantoms of the mind.
The heart is self-deceived, and love is blind.

SONNET-2

Our thought, serene, imbued with patience, is
For perfect contemplation our sure need.
Suppression fails, like other hindrances
Which, churning in the mind, serve there as feed...
Silence, seclusion: these are realms of gold,
Threshold and gate into eternity;
Who turn to the Almighty and take hold
Of faith to end it, meet the Deity.
Our heart, though in this world, is paradise
For those who seek their God: for it is in
The mind alone that we encounter lies,
We find the soul where we find God: within.
Quit this dark world. Quit hell and earth, both grim.
Be as the soul is. Now, with God! In Him

SONNET-3

There is a valley between high and low
And smooth-browed hills a place where I would go
By running crystal streams through pathless woods,
I walked there most in spring, when waking buds
And early flowers and the honeybee
Were sweet upon the air, delighting me,
At times, a songbird, warbling in the sky
Would break through mist and hover. There was I,
Too strong, too deep, a joy with me alone
I walk alone as now. I walk; a stone
Shaped like a jewel hung above my heart!
It is a ruby. Here it is. My art
Encapsulated here; a thing of worth:
As jewels is not ordinary earth.

SONNET-4

Every dawn, just as the sun up rises,
Hiding in ferns and trees, a small bird sings
Like the breeze, it suddenly surprises
Then butterflies with multi-coloured wings
Dazzle the eye and fill the heart with joy.
Then honeybees are busy here and there,
Staring creatures of the wild deploy
In silence all their skills and each with care,
So life reveals its splendour and I, waiting
To see you come to me, remain stock-still
As if a live statue contemplating
The name of love, submitting to its will
Enlightened, light will not now go away,
And thus your slender coming seals the day.

SONNET-5

Dusky you are, favourite of my heart!
Stir my soul with glimpses of your features
Hidden behind the veil of love and art
Bewitching is your beauty. Of all creatures,
You most intoxicate. Your soul excels
At peering through the curtain of the eyes,
Intent to kill or maim! No story tells
More than your tongue and lips of paradise!
How inexpressible the way you walk,
How rich the coquetry curbed in your voice!
Your silent beauty speaks far more than talk
So that, I look, and worship, and rejoice
Who would be me, of love and beauty bard?
A prisoner, enslaved; life's going hard?

SONNET-6

She listened to my fumbling speech with joy.
She stood breast high. We bumbling boys, forlorn.
Seeing her coming, eager to employ
Awaking passion, hopeful in its dawn
She, like a lovely angel, heaven-born,
And we mere mortals groveling below
If we resented this, it showed as scorn
Pretending an indifference; although
Much angered by her smiles and azure mirth
She stood breast-high amongst us, we enslaved
As if she were an angel come to earth.
We hungered after her, not yet depraved
But captivated by awakened lust!
Ashes to ashes may be, dust to dust?

SONNET-7

Love, if too young, cannot know what age is
Yet who knows not that age is born of love?
Call me 'a cheat' (may be?). If you are wise,
Realize truth or else bid me adieu
The truth is that love recognizes love,
When two eyes meet souls mingle together,
Then hearts beat faster, making the blood glow
But, come what may, lovers do not bother
Love in you is waiting, open for me
I feel too hot to touch you, and to love
What holds us two apart you know: you see
My guilt, my faults, and your sweet self may approve
No barriers of age hold back. I call
Only for 'love', for love we rise and fall. 

SONNET-8

You are a thing of beauty heaven-sent
And you as beauty fill my thought with song.
You are as pleasing as an instrument:
A joy, to look at sounding sweet and strong
How rare and wonderful it is to see,
To hear, to treasure, understand and touch!
This thing of joy is surely not for me
For I do not amount to very much!
Yet, when we are together, you and I,
You holding my two hands, it seems my heart
Leaps far from life and death, and cannot die:
We both exalted in the realm of art.
Love begets love, love bears love. Even so,
Hatred or jealousy will make love go.

SONNET-9

Can you not hear this voice? It is my soul
Reverberating in my hollow heart!
Do you play foul or fair? In part or whole,
Are you a flirt or not? For such your art
That I no longer judge and reason spins
A thousand tales and each one ends in woe
It is in expiation of these sins
Lovers commit that I now undergo.
I am obsessed, enslaved by dreams of you
But I am empty and I weep no more.
What is a lie? Please tell me: What is true?
For I am empty to my deep heart's core!
This is a torment barren of sweet tears,
My life is death, and not what it appears.

SONNET-10

Tomorrow, like today and yesterday
Life will surge forward like an endless breeze
Upon some arctic waste: I left to freeze
As if a frozen statue of this may.
Gone are the days and nights when I had time
To think of betterment and having fun;
I am pre-occupied, and have begun
To spurn the unobtainable sublime,
Regret!  What is it but a retrospect?
Refreshed whilst our longings keep their power?
Anticipation!  If the present sour,
Can things to come be free of that defect?
I thank God all will pass. As all things do,
I too try out for happiness like you.

SONNET-11

Thinking of you is pleasure. Thoughts may please
But, unfulfilled, they poisoning the blood--
Contain the stings that kill like honey bees
Or death that lies beneath the serpent's hood.
Sweet silent whispers are like butterflies
That kisses flowers of the fields, but show
As does the serpent's bite where sure death lies!
I think this all that lovers need to know.
The rest is fiction. Lovers can believe
That black is white, white black; with worse to come
Oh, that in love we might at least retrieve
A little of good sense some say that some
Who can recover do so at great cost?
Memory cheats. Who fantasize is lost.

SONNET-12

No poet I; disciple of the mind.
Rather I am a minister of woe
My heart is full and I am not unkind,
But I an trapped by memory and know
That, till it dies, I am its prisoner!
I mesmerize myself. I see the flame
And feel the pain of it; and I see stir,
Amongst the shadows, one who walks to claim?
My soul as ransom for a promised kiss
For which I waited far too long; I pray:
My dreams detain me. Life has come to this:
The thoughts that haunt me will not go away.
Give me, perhaps, your sacramental wine!
Better that dream than this if both are mine.

SONNET-13

If I am source of some delight to you,
As you are, all in all, joys to me,
Then no doubt we have solved the mystery
Of perfect unity none can undo.
Now time, which seems to separate, unites
And places, where we dwell, divide no more.
Natural law seems ended: Other law
Says: days -- no more days, nor night’s mere nights!
So we make use, each moment of our lives,
Of that within, which none can do without?
Love, when perfected, terminates all doubt.
It is for this each ailing true heart strives.
But what a failure comes to us if when
Love dies between false women and false men.

SONNET-14

The deep blue-sky look royal during day,
Romantic at night, sensuous in eve;
Winsome in the morning, breaks rays of love,
Interacts with all but loves none to say:
Love is a means, through which heart speaks with heart,
Soul merges with soul, mind communes with mind,
Feeling warms up blood, longing eyes turn blind
See nothing but love, two halves of a part:
Made for each other, draw divine pleasure,
Through words, through syntax, through vision, phrases,
Feel the rhythm of speechless messages,
It’s Love, pure love, love beyond measure
Now tell me, are you not in love with me?
If so, allow love-stream join the sea.

SONNET-15

Clouds, gathering, pile up in fields of air.
The sun seems tethered to the earth, behind
Thick walls of cloud, creating deep despair!
As darkness gathers, making all things blind,
Unseen wind, howling circles Drenching rain
Threatens but does not come. All things retreat
Into their nests or burrows, fearing pain;
And I am numb and frozen to my feet.
Yet my heart leaps: The hazard yet to come
Looms like a heaving ghost of massive weight.
The storm now breaks, and I am stricken dumb:
It is this power that I celebrate!
Caught up, I am thrown down. I gasp for air...
To live! Or die! With no time for despair

SONNET-16

I loved you well, and then left you at my will.
I gave my heart, in turn I pain received.
Your infidelity torments me still.
I do not know why I was so deceived.
Futile, I know, to blame you for your deeds
The part you played by part-ignoring me
And then enslaving me till the heart bleeds!
You played the game of love too perfectly.
Had you ignored me firmly once for all,
Giving no space in life to me as lover,
Then had I spurned you, set you beyond call,
Giving my heart, and me, time to recover!
But now I say: Best marry who loves you
Not whom you love. God help me, this is true.

SONNET-17

When deeply hurt, sometimes I wallow
In shallow water, leaping like a fish;
Strength vanishing, I then feel hollow:
Brittle, shattered, like a broken dish...
My anger spreads all over. I go mad.
Wild fire burns within, and what I do
I do not know; nor know the good from bad,
Nor right from wrong; nor recognize the true
Time and again, I feel that I am damned,
Like jelly stones in concrete set in stone,
Hammered and broken, buried deep and rammed
Into a living tomb! I am alone.
Desires, aims, and will, submit to death
And yet, though dead, I live, and still draw breath.

SONNET-18

Bards of all passions on this earth
Do you know what the pure heart seeks?
As I, do you endure the mirth?
And mockery of rosy cheeks,
Sharp sidelong glances that can kill,
And eyes that murder easily?
Dear friends, I fear that I am ill
With a contagious malady
It is as if within my heart
I built a temple where I crown,
Upon the altar of my art
The goddess, Love, who bids me drown
Myself for her as others died:
My sacrifice; my suicide!

SONNET-19

The poems I recite and write,
I choose for beauty all can see.
I wish to free that sudden light.
Beauty is honey-sweet, for me!
Where the beauty that I seek?
Is it for me, if it is lost?
The beauty of which I would speak
Cannot be bought at any cost!
To love, a lover must be loved,
Held by the hand in high esteem!
By loneliness what is improved?
Reality becomes a dream.
Let beauty shine! And let this light
Be in each line I choose to write. 

SONNET-20

A symbol of fidelity,
Or a source of inspiration,
Goldmine of sensuality,
Or a treasure trove of passion;
Tell me now what else shall I call?
Face emotional explosions?
Tempt me no more, I tend to fall
-- Into volcanic eruptions.
Men of reason don’t fall in love,
Since life is not idealism;
Full moon emits love from above,
Zephyr soothes all, carry no ism
Heart needs heart to beat in rhythm,
Love is divine, love blooms to chime.

About the Poems of Mohammed Fakhruddin

By Dr. P. Raja and Dr. Rita Nath Keshari (Pondicherry, India)

     Down the ages, both enthusiasts and skeptics have tried to unravel the mystery of the primary emotion called love. The more they have attempted to do this more perplexed they have become. Nevertheless, their failure has not deterred others from journeying to the kingdom of love. What is love? Is it a process of self-recognition as the individual, enmeshed in love, experiences the various nuances if this unfathomable mystery? Some would argue that an amorous relationship leads to self-oblivion. Thus, one cannot predict or affirm what love is or would do to those who surrender before it. Probably a poet, who can capture minutely in concrete terms this whirlwind of feelings, can convey to us what has been eluding us. Dr. Mohammed Fakhruddin, in this collection of 20 sonnets, leads us along to explore his inner world. Even if he has not personally experienced the rollercoaster challenge of love he makes us believe that he is sharing his subjective experiences with his readers.

In sonnet 1, the poet indulges in nostalgia and tries to retrieve those precious moments of glory which love bestowed on him. The contradictory feelings of living and dying are alternately brought into sharp relief. As his emotions rise to a crescendo there is a chill realization that a harsh reality awaits him. He considers himself duped by his fancies and he blames love for its blindness.

Undaunted by these vacillations, the poet stresses the need for contemplation. He compares silence and seclusion as ‘threshold and gate into eternity’. Sonnet 2 reveals a deep spiritual mood and are-affirmation of faith in God’s compassion. In a mood of renunciation, he wants to turn away from both hell and earth and seek God in his abode.

In sonnet 3 the seeker refers to a valley, safe from human interferences, where he spent much of his time contemplating about his jewels like art. Since it hangs metaphorically above his heart, this art is also a talisman warding off all evil.

The poet establishes in these 3 sonnets (sonnet-1 to 3) the intensity of his inner life and the protective aura of his art. Nature has nurtured his soul and one finds echoes of Wordsworth in many of his lines. Once he creates a vibrant ambience of peace and longing he introduces the theme of love in sonnet 4. This sonnet deals with a very important aspect of love relationships- an over brimming passion for their surroundings, especially Nature. It is as though their love was meant to be a limitless force that would draw everything into its gambit. While waiting for his beloved, the poet turns into a living statue, ready to surrender himself to love’s will. The line ‘Enlightened; light will not now go away’ illustrates the power of love which can dispel ignorance and this state of enlightenment becomes a permanent one.

However much a man may be elevated in love and teach himself to appreciate a dark skin he still prefers a woman who can communicate in silence. Her dusky complexion (sonnet 5) stirs his dark soul, he claims. Does the poet wish to indicate that her dark exterior is matched equally well by his ‘dark soul’? Is he also implying that a fair soul hides inside her tanned body? Her eloquent eyes render unnecessary any exchange of words and we know what role her ‘lips of paradise’ play for the poet. Even when she speaks it is only her coquetry that appeals to his ears.

In the next line the poet asserts that her silence is more articulate than her speech. Though he longs to be a bard to her beauty and love he cannot fulfill this wish because she has enthralled him.

Not the sort of a man to forget his first love, he recalls his tender feelings for a girl who stood ‘breast high’ before him. Sonnet 6 depicts how the poet deified this girl and mockingly refers to himself as a ‘mere mortal’. The repetition of the ‘angel’ motif signifies that he and his playmates viewed love as something native to heaven. Parallel to this streak of idealism is a frank avowal of the ‘adolescent hunger’ and ‘the awakened lust’ for her.

In sonnet 7 the poet depicts a reverse situation where he encounters a young girl who vacillates before this new experience. Contrasting her youthfulness with his experience he claims that his level of maturity will render his emotions stable. Defending him against her accusations, the poet challenges her to recognize the quality of love that binds them together. Once she realizes the divine element in this great emotion she will acknowledge what a great miracle it is.

It is probably this reluctant and skeptical lady who fully succumbs to the surging passion in her heart in sonnet 8. After heaping eulogies on her and comparing her to a fine musical instrument the poet seems to recoil upon himself all of a sudden. He questions his worth and becomes self-deprecatory. Nevertheless, as she holds his hands he imagines that he can surmount death. Since their relationship had been enriched by artistic experiences no negative emotion can rear its ugly head before them.

From the heights of ethereal love men have to descend to measure the depths of despair. Shakespeare had rightly observed in his play A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “the course of true love never did run smooth”. In sonnet 9 the experience of beatitude gives way to a deep-rooted anguish. The beloved refuses to acknowledge the man who pursues her so relentlessly. If in the previous sonnet he had talked of love overpowering jealousy and hatred then here he sees these two negative emotions subjugating love. Oscillating between the two extremes of truth and falsehood the poet’s ‘angst’ reverberates in our mind. The observation ‘this is a torment barren of sweet tears’ captures his heart-rending experience.

His agony rings out in every line of sonnet 10. The first line “to-morrow, like today and yesterday’, have the same monotonous and pathetic ring as Macbeth’s famous monologue delivered after hearing about his wife’s death, “to-morrow, and to-morrow and to-morrow / Creeps in the petty pace from day to day….”. Terms like ‘artic waste’, ‘freeze’, ‘frozen statue’ introduce the chill truth about her deliberate infidelity. Spurning words like regret and anticipation he tries to break free of self-delusion. Only a small whisper of optimism breathes through the final couplet of the sonnet.

In sonnet 11 the poet scathingly comments on the perilous consequences of unfulfilled thoughts and desires. He comments wryly that lovers must be cognized about the fatal dangers lurking behind the ephemeral brilliance of treacherous love. ‘the rest is fiction’ is a cynical view about love being a multi-layered figment of the imagination without any real substance. The poet regrets the way lovers surrender their common sense and render themselves vulnerable to hostile attacks. In this sonnet the poet reduces love to a series of fantasies.

Sonnet 12 leads us to the sad and woeful inner spaces where the poet is condemned to live till the end. Such is the power of memory that one cannot escape its tentacles. References to flame, pain, ransom and mesmerism conjure up the image of hell’s circles. His vision of his beloved, among the nefarious shadows, claiming ‘his soul as ransom for a promised kiss’ projects her as a bewitching sorceress. His prayers are of no avail as his dreams lure him closer to this enchantress. He asks for sacramental wine to protect himself from her spell.

Sonnet 13 rings with some profound observations about the principles that govern true lovers and how they ought to be exempted from social conventions. When a man-woman relationship achieves perfect unity they transcend the barriers of time and milieu. It also eludes the impact of all kinds of falsehood. The last couplet contrasts this idealistic situation with the tragic one in which hypocritical lovers throttle this divine gift called love.

Emerging from a long phase of dejection the lover discovers the redemptive power of beauty and the desire to be loved and cherished. He pities the sky for its forlorn existence and rings the glory of lesser mortals who love and find fulfillment. His beloved seems to have relented and the poet expects reconciliation. Sonnet 14 ends with the eager lover waiting for her positive response.

However, storm clouds and thunder showers on the horizon of his life hide this seductress, adept at the game of coquetry. But his heart refuses to believe the obvious in sonnet 15. as his storm-tossed heart struggles for life a ray of hope steals in.

The course of true love turns out to be a chequered one as the poet discovers to his great dismay. He repents his inability to break free from her clutches in the past. As a result her fickle behaviour tortures him. Love is a sport for her and she knows how to toy with his feelings (sonnet 16). By tantalizing him with her flippancy she savours his sorrow sadistically.

What happens to a sensitive soul which rebels against this sort of infidelity? In sonnet 17 the poet graphically describes the turbulence of his inner life. At first, he feels like a fish thrashing about in shallow water then considers himself as worthless as broken crockery. As his anger explodes within him he loses his much-vaunted identity. Pain seems to entomb him alive. And yet in that sepulchral silence he feels the faint stirring of life within him.

In sonnet 18 he expresses his agony with all candidness. He demands to know whether other poets too are fatally victimized by beautiful women. He laments about the way he had deified the goddess of love but there is something infernal about her attributes. As oblation she demands the sacrifice of her devotees and thus the poet foresees his self-immolation at her bidding.

Sonnet 19 deals with his devotion to his craft. He can survive the turbulence only by taking refuge in his art. His deep love for aesthetics cordons him off from all inauspicious influences. Impeccable, priceless and inaccessible, beauty has made a devotee out of him. He seems to have come out of his trauma as he defines to himself what kind of treatment he deserves from his beloved. Loneliness is a bane for all creative people and they must preserve their links with their inner founts of spiritual sustenance. His suffering takes on the quality of a nightmare fading into the past. He exhorts beauty to register its presence in every line that he writes.

In the final sonnet he addresses his beloved in several ways and pleads with her to be a symbol of peace and equilibrium so that poetry can flow uninterrupted from his pen.

*

20 Sonnets cover a wide range of emotion, thought and philosophy. They are magnificent!

By Ruth Wildes Schuler (Novato, CA U.S.A.)

     Ruth Wildes Schuler, born in 1933, received her M.A. degree from San Francisco State University. She has published over 1,000 poems, short stories and literary essays in 22 countries and translated in 16 languages. She awarded numerous literary prizes and commendations for her work in USA and India. She published an International Literary Journal, Prophetic Voices for 11 years, and published books of poetry under her press, Heritage & Trails Press, but gave it up to devote full time to her revolution , The Turbulent Tide, and is working on a collection of poetry about writers, artists, musicians and the creative experience.

 

     The Sonnet is probably the most popular fixed form in English poetry.  It has a definite rhyme scheme with a lyric of fourteen iambic five-foot lines.  There are two forms widely used.  They are the Italian or Petrarchian sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet.  The first eight lines are called the octave and the concluding six lines are called the sestet.  The first quatrain should introduce the theme, and the second should continue the development of this theme in a certain direction.  Then the sestet brings a different development that flows in a definite point and the final tercet brings the theme to a conclusion.

     There are some poets like Dr. Mohammed Fakhruddin who can so skillfully develop these theme patterns and who have that perfect sense of rhyme and rhythm to produce this difficult form.

     These twenty sonnets express love, doubt, and the desire of a poet to excel in his life’s mission.  In his first sonnet, he grieves for lost love –“ My mind surveys the woodlands of desire”, but his desire is not to be fulfill, so he ends this sonnet with the beautiful rhyming lines –

But dreams are facts called phantoms of the mind.
The heart is self-deceived, and love is blind.

     In sonnet 2, the poet seeks solitude and peace – “Silence, seclusion: these are realms of gold, /Threshold and gate into eternity;/.  Dr. Fakhruddin tells us we have to slough off the external earthly hindrances and seek God within.

Quit this dark world. Quit hell and earth, both grim.
Be as the soul is.  Now, with God!  In Him.

     In Sonnet 4, a beautiful portrait of nature is painted:  ”Then butterflies with multi-coloured wings. /Dazzle the eye and fill the heart with joy.”  However the poet is not completed until his love appears:

            The name of love, submitting to its will
            Enlightened. Light will not now go away,
            And thus your slender coming seals the day.

     Sonnet 5 is a beautiful love poem in which the poet worships the beauty of a dark maiden.  He is intoxicated and bewitched by her beauty.   She needs no words to entice him, and he tells her in perfect flowing rhythm –

How rich the coquetry curbed in your voice!
Your silent beauty speaks far more than talk
So that, I look, and worship, and rejoice
Who would be me, of love and beauty bard?
A prisoner, enslaved; life’s going hard?

     Sonnet 6 records a boy’s first sexual yearning and lust.  “We hungered after her, not yet depraved”.  The poet tells us of his –

Awaking passion, hopeful in its dawn
She, like a lovely angel, heaven-born

     However his lust is not to be sated.  “But dashed to “Ashes to ashes may be, dust to dust?”

     In Sonnet 7, the poet tells us about the power of love – “When two eyes met souls mingle together/ Then hearts beat faster, making the blood glow/ But, come what may lovers do not bother”.  It is guilt and feelings of inadequacy that hold lovers back, often leaving them unfulfilled.

     Sonnet 8 is especially powerful, as the poet feelings of inadequacy overwhelm him. 

To hear, to treasure, understand and touch!
This thing of joy is surely not for me
For I do not amount to very much!
Yet, when we are together, you and I,
You holding my two hands, it seems my heart
Leaps far from life and death, and cannot die:

     Love can reinforce his passion, but jealousy can also destroy this love.

     In Sonnet 9, the poet’s emotions spin, for his lover plays upon his jealousies and he proclaims that – “My life is death, and not what it appears”.

     In Sonnet 10, Fakhruddin dwells upon the past – “Gone are the days and nights when I had time/To think of betterment.”  Now he feels. “Regret!  What is it but a retrospect?”  Yet though many things in life have turned sour and are defective, he hopes they will pass and he will continue to try to find happiness.

     In Sonnet 11, the poet becomes disillusioned.

Thinking of you is pleasure.  Thoughts may please
But, unfulfilled, they poisoning the blood-
Contain the stings that kill like honey bees
Of death that lies beneath the serpent’s hood.

     He realizes that love everlasting is a fiction and ends the poem with the words “Memory cheats.  Who fantasize is lost.”

     In Sonnet 12, the poet feels trapped by his memories.  He feels pain and like a prisoner.  His dreams have detained him and the haunting of his past prevents him from going forth to create new dreams.   Sonnet 13 recounts a perfect love – “Love. When perfected, terminates all doubt/It is for this each ailing true heart strives.”  However, when either the woman or man is false, it all fails and “Love dies.”

     Sonnet 14 paints a lovely natural scene with a deep blue-sky and the poet tells us that with true love –

Love is a means through which heart speaks with heart,
Soul merges with soul, mind communes with mind,
Feeling warms up blood, longing eyes turn blind;
See nothing but love, two halves of a part:

     Sonnet 15 presents the fury of a storm. Dr. Fakhruddin’s poem brings forth memories to me of John Greenleaf Whittier’s famous poem Snowbound.  All of nature’s creatures retreat into their burrows and the poet proclaims –

Yet my heart leaps; The hazard yet to come
Looms like a heaving ghost of massive weight.
The storm now breaks, and I am stricken dumb.
It is this power that I celebrate! 

     We are all powerless before nature’s wrath.

     In Sonnet 16 the poet tells us –

I loved you well, then left you at my will.
I gave you my heart, in turn I pain received,
Your infidelity torments me still
I do not now why I was so deceived.

     One of my favorite sonnets was number 17.  This one is so powerful and captures the universal sense of the alienation in man with the lines –

Time and again, I feel that I am damned
Like jelly stones in concrete set in stone,
Hammered and broken, buried deep and rammed
Into a living tomb!  I am alone.

     In Sonnet 18, Dr. Fakhruddin speaks to the other Bards of this world and tells them—

It is as if within my heart
I built a temple where I crown,
Upon the altar of my art
The goddess, Love, who bids me drown
Myself for her as others did:
My sacrifice; my suicide!

     The writer is always torn between the lover and his art.

            In Sonnet 19, the poet carries this thought further.
 
To love, a lover must be loved,
Held by the hand in high esteem!
By loneliness what is improved?
Reality becomes a dream.
Let beauty shine!  And let this light
Be in each line I choose to write.

     And lastly in Sonnet 20, the poet tells us “Men of reason don’t fall in love.”  However the poet under the enchantment of the moon above and all the “Goldmine of sensuality” cannot escape its calling,

Heart needs heart for rhythm and rhyme,
Love is divine, love blooms to chime.

     These twenty sonnets cover a wide range of emotion, thought and philosophy.
They are magnificent!