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One of the most original of Pakistani poets, Daud Kamal underwent the experience of displacement early in life. He was born in Abbottabad, and spent his early childhood in Srinagar, Kashmir wherehe studied for seven years at Burn Hall Cambridge School. After independence, and the resultant disturbances, he was obliged to come to Abbottabad where he resumed his education at Burn Hall Abbottabad. He then enrolled at Islamia College, Peshawar, following which he earned his BA (Honours) in English with distinction. Kamal then proceeded to the University of Cambridge to complete the Tripos. Upon his return, he joined the English Department of the Peshawar University where he taught for the rest of his life Daud Kamal published four poetry collections, namely, ‘Compass of Love and Other Poems’ (1973), ‘Recognitions’ (1979), and ‘A Remote Beginning: Poems’ (1985). All three collections were posthumously collected in ‘Before the Carnations Wither: Collected Poems’ 1995). Kamal also translated selected poems of famous Urdu poets, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Mirza Ghalib. Inrecognition of his poetry, he was awarded three gold medals in the United States. Professor Kamaldied in 1987 and was laid to rest in the graveyard of Peshawar University. The Government of Pakistan posthumously conferred on him the prestigious Pride of Performance Award in 1990.
Mental Patient
Daud Kamal
Between him and freedom the big, brawny hospital attendants – their cheap, ill-fitting uniforms exuding sweat. The odour of a rational world. In this, his antiseptic- whitewashed room he sits all day alone, deaf to the scrambled noise of radios, the bright hysterical laughter of his friends in madness. All night he stares up at the ceiling cracks, the few stray moths that come to circumnavigate a naked bulb. His eyes have hardened into stone. And still, he dreams –of the day he’ll see the peacocks dance their vivid dance.
From: Mornings in the Wilderness edited by Waqas A. Khwaja
Notes: The rational world of checks and bounds, limits free thinkers, freedom seekers, and dreamers who end up being treated as mental patients, like the character presented in this poem. The world of so-called sensible people, exudes sweat, and spews foul smells of antiseptics and soon. While the patient patiently waits alone, he pays little heed to the surrounding noise and confusion, and instead stares up “at the few moths that come / to circumnavigate a naked bulb”, and dreams of the dancing peacocks which can transmute the forest he is in. An idealist, a dreamerlike the poet himself, is destined to be isolated; such people may be imprisoned and incarcerated,but they cannot be stopped from dreaming.
It is a free verse poem with irregular stanza pattern, that is, the number of lines varies from stanzato stanza. The poem is highly evocative; it employs vivid but extremely sensuous imagery, bringing into play our sense of sound, smell, and sight. Take, for instance, the images such as “sweat. / The odour of a rational world”, “antiseptic / whitewashed room” [ … ] “the scrambled noise / of radios, the bright hysterical laughter” [ … ] and “peacocks / dance their vivid dance” and so on.
Kingfisher
Daud Kamal
April is the kingfisher’s beak which pierces the river’s glad torment. Is this an image of our love? Carnage in the rose valleys under the first light of our wounds. Clouds detach themselves from disconsolate trees. The future curves on another shore. Tongues of water cradle our startled dreams. Moss-grown stepping-stones. The stars burn fiercely. They tell us what we are.
From: Mornings in the Wilderness edited by Waqas A. Khwaja
Notes: Kamal was a modernist poet, and the very first lines ‘April / is the kingfisher’s beak” sounds
reminiscent of Eliot’s ‘April is the cruelest month’. Kamal however personifies the month of April and likens it to the piercing beak of the bird. He then questions if it is an image of ‘our love’, following which he uses exotic and evocative imagery to suggest the disturbance love can create in the still waters of life. This is clearly brought forth in a series of images such as “pierces”,“carnage”, “wounds”, “disconsolate trees”, and “startled dreams”. The poem closes with a declarative statement that the burning stars ‘tell us what we are”.
Written in free verse, which was typical of the modern poets, the poem is divided into two irregular stanzas. It is remarkable for its highly poetic imagery and the use of enjambment, which creates suspense and tension wherever unusual line breaks occur.