The Ghagra In Spate By Keki N.Daruwalla

The Ghagra In Spate By Keki N.Daruwalla

By

Bijay Kant Dubey

The Ghagra In Spate is one of the most representative poems of Daruwalla reminding us of those rivers of India which really wreak havoc during the rainy times or when the excessive water is discharged from the dams unable to contain in. Such a topic is really not the prerogative of all as those interested in geography can only tell it. But he felt those things when posted as a police officer of a highest rank and these form the impressions of those times. When the poet refers to the Ghagra, a desire crops within to know the path, course of it through which it flows down. Where does it originate from and where does fall into? Is it naturally prone to flooding or the dam is the cause of the overflow and discharge of water? When it rains heavily for days, the water bodies and reservoirs fail to contain, it spills and adds to human woes and misery. Whatever be that, the flood situation forms the crux of the matter and the poet views it through the lens of the twilight and the dark night. It is no doubt beautiful to see the river in spate, but they can only feel the pains who really go through the upheavals and repercussions when the water level rises above the danger level, the situation worsens beyond control. At that time Daruwalla too cannot come to rescue, but only the Vedic gods, Varuna and Indra if they too can hear human prayers. Flood waters keep swirling and devouring causing damage to standing crops, live stock and human life. Poetry too cannot help in any way. First, life then comes it poetry whatever says it Daruwalla. Gautam Buddha once cautioned against fire and water and these two can never be believed. The areas under water and the people running for cover can only tell it the harrowing experiences of life, not Keki N.Daruwalla though he views it poetically. 

Every year the Ghagra changes its course turning over and over to float and flow by not naturally, but abnormally, swirling and devouring the areas, placing them under water, a vast stretch of land and live stock and this is the scene of the poem under our perusal and discussion. In the afternoon she is a grey smudge exploring a grey canvas. When dusk reaches her through an overhang of cloud she is overstewed coffee. At night she is a red weal across the spine of the land is a picture, an image, a metaphor. Driving at dusk one wouldn't know what she is really. There is a flood ‘on ' sets the ball rolling, the landscape is so superbly equipoised, rice-shoots pricking through a stretch of water and light spiked shadows, inverted trees, kingfishers, gulls. As twilight thins the road is a black stretch running between the stars blackening it all. This is how he takes to the scenery, painting as per his word and imagery. Slowly and suddenly the waters inundate a vast tract of land.

And suddenly at night the north comes to the village riding on river-back with the river changing flows, water spilling, heading to, gushing forth, steaming and streaming. Twenty minutes of a nightmare spin and fear turns phantasmal as half a street goes churning in the river-belly acts as a catalyst and it culminates into. If only voices could light lamps! If only limbs could turn to rafted bamboo! And through the village the Ghaghra steers her course taking on and flowing; thatch and dung-cakes turn to river-scum, a buffalo floats over to the rooftop where the men are stranded. Three days of hunger, and her udders turn red-rimmed and swollen with milk-extortion place us in a different situation of life. The scene is but a spectacle for children mustering spirit enough in them to cheer the rescue boats; the men are still-life subjects oozing wet looks. They don't rave or curse for they know the river's slang, her argot. No one sends up prayers to a wasted sky, for prayers are parabolic they will come down with a flop anyway. If the situation be as such, whom to pray to? Prayers will perhaps fall flat. Children act as the cheerleaders deriving pleasure out of as always and cheering the rescue teams. Instead there's a slush-stampede outside the booth where they are doling out salt and grain. Ten miles to her flank peasants go fishing in rice fields and women in chauffeur-driven cars go looking for driftwood. The relief camps have something other to tell about, the people lined, taking and jostling with, some getting and some not. How to reach the places out of reach? Only the rough and tough, those who know swimming and the daredevils who like adventures can come to rescue at that time of flooding and heavy rains.

But it is when she recedes that the Ghaghra turns bitchy sucking with animal-heat, cross-eddies diving like frogmen and sawing away the waterfront in a paranoid frenzy tells of the aftermath of ravages and furies. She flees from the scene of her own havoc thrashing with pain to be compensated and ruminated over. Behind her the land sinks, houses sag on to their knees in a farewell obeisance is the aftermath of it figures the land mass undergone changes in shapes and figures. And miles to the flank, the paddy fields will hoard the fish till the mud enters into a conspiracy with the sun and strangles them. Silvery fish can be seen making a way into the mud and slush of the paddy fields and the people after fishing.

Keki N.Daruwalla is very irregular in his stanza pattern as because here and there he breaks and starts up though the continuity remains intact. Barabanki would have been the epicentre of this writing. The poem is a report on the do’s and dont’s of the flood time; a photography of the area inundated. On marking the water level rising and rains continuing for so long, what one should, it is very difficult to say, as misfortune never comes alone. Even the options remain for to move to a safer place, may like to stay at unmindful of what it to befall. The villages under water, people on rooftops or on rafts made from banana planks or bamboos take to as for saving themselves paint the flood scene in a picturesque manner, but the woes of the people indescribable. Daruwalla has just said about the bufflaoes, but not about the goats, sheep, ducks and cows.

Daruwalla as a poet taxes rather than giving joys and his poetry is weighty, laden and somber. To read him is to be burdened. All the time death, disease, loss, casualty, tragedy, pain, curfew and riot cannot appease us as we need pleasure.  But he is a different fellow as for different treasons, the first being a Parsi, the second a policeman and the third a tragedian. His mythic ice is difficult to be cut. The identity crisis too puts the poetic self in an askance which he seems to be grappling with.

The poem is like a report on the flood scene, an essay or a paragraph. The matter though one of hydrology or hydrography brings in many a thing within the range of our delving. There are many rivers which keep ruffling, as such the Ganges, the Sone, the Gandak, the Damodar, the Teesta, the Brahmaputra and so on and if we can compare the things, it will be remarkable.  

The Ghagra In Spate: Keki N.Daruwalla

The Ghagra In Spate By Keki N.Daruwalla

By

Bijay Kant Dubey

The Ghagra In Spate is one of the most representative poems of Daruwalla reminding us of those rivers of India which really wreak havoc during the rainy times or when the excessive water is discharged from the dams unable to contain in. Such a topic is really not the prerogative of all as those interested in geography can only tell it. But he felt those things when posted as a police officer of a highest rank and these form the impressions of those times. When the poet refers to the Ghagra, a desire crops within to know the path, course of it through which it flows down. Where does it originate from and where does fall into? Is it naturally prone to flooding or the dam is the cause of the overflow and discharge of water? When it rains heavily for days, the water bodies and reservoirs fail to contain, it spills and adds to human woes and misery. Whatever be that, the flood situation forms the crux of the matter and the poet views it through the lens of the twilight and the dark night. It is no doubt beautiful to see the river in spate, but they can only feel the pains who really go through the upheavals and repercussions when the water level rises above the danger level, the situation worsens beyond control. At that time Daruwalla too cannot come to rescue, but only the Vedic gods, Varuna and Indra if they too can hear human prayers. Flood waters keep swirling and devouring causing damage to standing crops, live stock and human life. Poetry too cannot help in any way. First, life then comes it poetry whatever says it Daruwalla. Gautam Buddha once cautioned against fire and water and these two can never be believed. The areas under water and the people running for cover can only tell it the harrowing experiences of life, not Keki N.Daruwalla though he views it poetically. 

Every year the Ghagra changes its course turning over and over to float and flow by not naturally, but abnormally, swirling and devouring the areas, placing them under water, a vast stretch of land and live stock and this is the scene of the poem under our perusal and discussion. In the afternoon she is a grey smudge exploring a grey canvas. When dusk reaches her through an overhang of cloud she is overstewed coffee. At night she is a red weal across the spine of the land is a picture, an image, a metaphor. Driving at dusk one wouldn't know what she is really. There is a flood ‘on ' sets the ball rolling, the landscape is so superbly equipoised, rice-shoots pricking through a stretch of water and light spiked shadows, inverted trees, kingfishers, gulls. As twilight thins the road is a black stretch running between the stars blackening it all. This is how he takes to the scenery, painting as per his word and imagery. Slowly and suddenly the waters inundate a vast tract of land.

And suddenly at night the north comes to the village riding on river-back with the river changing flows, water spilling, heading to, gushing forth, steaming and streaming. Twenty minutes of a nightmare spin and fear turns phantasmal as half a street goes churning in the river-belly acts as a catalyst and it culminates into. If only voices could light lamps! If only limbs could turn to rafted bamboo! And through the village the Ghaghra steers her course taking on and flowing; thatch and dung-cakes turn to river-scum, a buffalo floats over to the rooftop where the men are stranded. Three days of hunger, and her udders turn red-rimmed and swollen with milk-extortion place us in a different situation of life. The scene is but a spectacle for children mustering spirit enough in them to cheer the rescue boats; the men are still-life subjects oozing wet looks. They don't rave or curse for they know the river's slang, her argot. No one sends up prayers to a wasted sky, for prayers are parabolic they will come down with a flop anyway. If the situation be as such, whom to pray to? Prayers will perhaps fall flat. Children act as the cheerleaders deriving pleasure out of as always and cheering the rescue teams. Instead there's a slush-stampede outside the booth where they are doling out salt and grain. Ten miles to her flank peasants go fishing in rice fields and women in chauffeur-driven cars go looking for driftwood. The relief camps have something other to tell about, the people lined, taking and jostling with, some getting and some not. How to reach the places out of reach? Only the rough and tough, those who know swimming and the daredevils who like adventures can come to rescue at that time of flooding and heavy rains.

But it is when she recedes that the Ghaghra turns bitchy sucking with animal-heat, cross-eddies diving like frogmen and sawing away the waterfront in a paranoid frenzy tells of the aftermath of ravages and furies. She flees from the scene of her own havoc thrashing with pain to be compensated and ruminated over. Behind her the land sinks, houses sag on to their knees in a farewell obeisance is the aftermath of it figures the land mass undergone changes in shapes and figures. And miles to the flank, the paddy fields will hoard the fish till the mud enters into a conspiracy with the sun and strangles them. Silvery fish can be seen making a way into the mud and slush of the paddy fields and the people after fishing.

Keki N.Daruwalla is very irregular in his stanza pattern as because here and there he breaks and starts up though the continuity remains intact. Barabanki would have been the epicentre of this writing. The poem is a report on the do’s and dont’s of the flood time; a photography of the area inundated. On marking the water level rising and rains continuing for so long, what one should, it is very difficult to say, as misfortune never comes alone. Even the options remain for to move to a safer place, may like to stay at unmindful of what it to befall. The villages under water, people on rooftops or on rafts made from banana planks or bamboos take to as for saving themselves paint the flood scene in a picturesque manner, but the woes of the people indescribable. Daruwalla has just said about the bufflaoes, but not about the goats, sheep, ducks and cows.

Daruwalla as a poet taxes rather than giving joys and his poetry is weighty, laden and somber. To read him is to be burdened. All the time death, disease, loss, casualty, tragedy, pain, curfew and riot cannot appease us as we need pleasure.  But he is a different fellow as for different treasons, the first being a Parsi, the second a policeman and the third a tragedian. His mythic ice is difficult to be cut. The identity crisis too puts the poetic self in an askance which he seems to be grappling with.

The poem is like a report on the flood scene, an essay or a paragraph. The matter though one of hydrology or hydrography brings in many a thing within the range of our delving. There are many rivers which keep ruffling, as such the Ganges, the Sone, the Gandak, the Damodar, the Teesta, the Brahmaputra and so on and if we can compare the things, it will be remarkable.  

Pestilence: Daruwalla

Pestilence by Keki N.Daruwalla

By

Bijay Kant Dubey

Pestilence by Keki N.Daruwalla is one like Curfew in a Riot-torn City and The Epileptic taken from the same collection of poems entitled Under Orion which he wrote long back in 1970 to see its appearance from Writers Workshop, Calcutta as the first poetic venture of the writer and with whom he made his   entry into the realms of Indian English poesy. Morning shows the day is the truth that holds true and it applies to Daruwalla, as goes the adage again, style is the man. The same Daruwalla we can still sense it now as he has not changed over the years. Death, disease and violence are the properties of his verse and he cannot without these. Here it is not curfew that he deals with, but pestilence, as the title is quite clear in revealing the same. The word pestilence means a deadly, fatal and infectious disease. It may be that the patient is afflicted with cholera, plague, small pox, diarrhea or tuberculosis. The defunct cholera and tuberculosis wards of the British period refreshen the memory with the imagery of the patients when there were not so many connect ways, bridges or the means of conveyance and transportation. The Indian countryside had been secluded and isolated enough, languishing in medievalism, superstition, poverty and illiteracy even after the attainment of freedom. The poet pictures such a scene fraught with hardship, bad luck and misery. The imagery of the poem is one of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities to some extent depicting the old woman on the cart trying to save the patient, steering it across. 

Daruwalla as a poet is a hard-hearted writer just like Ted Hughes and Robert Browning wherein the British period two-barrelled gun speaks the language of poetry used for a kill or to defend against the dreaded robbers of India, the Thakores, notorious Singhs. As a poet, he is verbose, bombastic and cathartic and purgatory. Poetry not born out of emotion and feeling, but out of brain-work and laborious attempts is the thing of deliberation. He writes not for pleasure and aesthetic sense. His is a language of violence, vengeance, wrath and ager rather than sympathy and its stroking. Riots, curfews, communal flares and frenzies are the stuffs of his poesy. Genealogically from Iran or Persia, one cutting the mythic ice of some different culture and clime, that too from the land of Zarathustra, he tells the Hindustani tales, originating from Lahore and Ludhiana to clutch Gujarat and the Terai region along in his stride to reach Delhi finally just like as Kipling told about Kim and Jim Corbett about the hunters. Such a pidgin-Indian stuff is in Rudyard Kipling’s poetry, but that laugh is not in Daruwalla, Indian gwala mixing milk in water and that too not the tap water, but the pond water as for to double the quantity.  British India’s gossips we can hear in Daruwalla’s poetry after passing some time in the bungalows of that sort where the sahib, bibi and gulam played the cards just like Munshi Prem Chand’s Satranj Ke Khiladi not with the nawabs and his courtier friends, but with White sahib and his gulams-cum-care-takers.

They are not the palanquin-bearers who carry the load of the newly wed small bride and the groom, the hurly-burly Kahars going with the palanquin, but are the same taking a patient to the town hospital who is infected with some fatal disease. A girl in sixteen shringaras, dress-ups or make-ups not, but a frail and frozen body is being carried. The sickling, weakling lying weak and pale is lifted on a sling cot to be taken away to by the same men as and when situations call for and herein lie the differences in observation and marking. Such a thing used to do the rounds in the Indian countryside.

Crossing the fields and fallows, highlands and lowlands, rivers and hilly ways, if the palanquin is not available, they take the patients away to the distant health centre as for treatment though the music may be here different as and when we contrast with those of the small girls as village brides leaving their families and houses in tears and going to their in-laws’ house and the groom party retreating with the band, the twilight falling over on the ways trodden and untrodden. Catching the same rhythm and spirit, the poet here paints the scene in a different mood of tuning and tenor. The poem pictures the image of the palkhis taking the royal or noble ladies to their places of f destinations. But here the matter is not one of travel or conveyance or festive mood or one of parting or departure from. The patient is transported to a near-by or far-off hospital. With the palkhis, box-like wooden framework and structure at the middle, there picture the images of the Kahar caste people, blackly and robust bearing the bamboo poles on the shoulders and taking the passengers away to their destination.

India the land of loot and plunder, devastation and turmoil, foreign invasion and raids, in the wake of superstition, medievalism and backwardness, we have not forgotten, seconded by witch-hunting, hocus-pocus and incantation. The Sati system, child marriage, widow repression, dowry death and human sacrifice still make the hair stand on. Sprinkling Ganga jal, how can we cleanse it all? Can the hearts be cleaned, purified? Can the diseases be cured?

A reading of the poem makes us remember of the malaria wards. The local people used to attribute the cause to some evil effect haunting during the eve-time. During the rainy days, that too in the months of Shravana-Bhadra, many used to fall ill after taking the ripe palms and others in the shortage of cereals. The tales of exotic and impregnable India are many. Only the Aryan or Muslim version of history cannot tell it all. The British-period eye hospitals with the European doctors, White memsahebs and sahebs evoke the imagery otherwise.   

The white marbled hospital, UNICEF jeeps, nurses clad in whites and the doctors present a contrast to the scenery with the bony, dehydrated and pale patients on string cots slinging and the blackly carriers carrying, bearing the load with. The White man’s burden was it really whether we accept it or not. Let them say what they want to, Gandhi, Nehru or Prasad. What is not British, say you. There had been the periods and ages of epidemics and pestilences. Typhoid, malaria, cholera, diarrhea, small pox, we have not forgotten those days of disease. Child marriage and pregnancy deaths have maligned and marauded ourselves for quite a long time.

Let us pick up a stanza to discuss the theme of the poem:

the hospital floors are marble white

black bodies dirty them

nurses in white habits

unicef jeeps with white bonnets 

doctors with white faces receive them 

‘who says they have cholera?

they are down with diarrhoea

who says it is cholera?

it is gastro-enteritis’

(Keki N.Dafruwalla, Under Orion, Rupa Co., 2000, New Delhi, p.16-7)

The stanza pattern of Daruwalla is very irregular and he is very casual in handling with. Some lines are placed zigzag and some slanting. Pestilence actually is a poem of the now-a-days lying defunct cholera ward, malaria ward which once used to vibe with.

The Professor Condoles by Daruwalla

The Professor Condoles by Daruwalla

By

Bijay Kant Dubey

The professor condoles it not, but Daruwalla is condoling, thinking of himself being in the English language and literature classroom or reading the books for Tragedy special paper in M.A. or father N.C.Daruwalla is giving lessons in. The professor condoles it not, but Daruwalla thinking himself not as an Indian Police Service officer, but as a professor of English and that too of Greek and Shakespearean tragedies take it for a moment. What can he know of to whom the tragedy takes place which but Daruwalla cannot feel it? A tragedy is a tragedy. The family to which it occurs knows it how the loss, sorrow befalling. A passer-by, by-stander cannot feel it. Tragedy, accident, death and disease, how to describe them? We do not have any words to express them. A policeman will just tell it a mishap in terms of law and order; an army man as casualties. So again repeat to emphasize upon, a tragedy is a tragedy. Tragedy has the ingredients of own. Accident too is so; its causes cannot be explained.

It is also sometimes true we think over and over, how did it happen? Why had it to take place? What were the causes of it? How the situations? Who were there as witnesses? How to gather the evidence? Whose fault was it? Whose mistake? Why had it to take place?

Was it in destiny? Was it lotted? Has been truly said, what it is lotted that cannot be blotted. Human destiny, what to say about it? Nothing known, the paths of life lie it in the dark, where to lead to.

Is man helpless before? Lot and situations? Was it writ before or is it situational? This is the thing to be reckoned with.

Man is a puppet into the hands of Destiny, they say it and we peruse it. Thomas Hardy opined it, also added to it that happiness is but a bubble in man’s life. So said the great then how to contradict their statements? And if Daruwalla too says this then too we shall take into confidence.

Let us be going, take to discussion what it has happened. An accident. An eleven-year boy run over by a car is the scene of the incident and Daruwalla talking to the brother of the dead boy and thinking about and giving lectures to as gave he the geography department retired teacher of Nissim in stitched English, we mean added, tagged and made English. Daruwalla too here is using the archaic words to enrich his phraseology and syntax to show he knows English. But the reality is his English too appears to be bombastic and verbose, archaic and alien, close to Iranian, Persian English. A Parsi and that too from Lahore, he too is in search of his persona, protagonist, mouthpiece, spokesman, the quest for identity definitely claws for, whatever say we about his Indian themes and Indianness.

After hearing about the tragedy from his brother, the professor says that he is not merely sorry to hear it, but it is terribly unfortunate too. He is really very, very sorry to hear about the mishap. There are no words to describe sorrow, affliction. But what to be done? The professor quotes some words from Anouilh’s expression. In his opinion, tragedy is clean, flawless, restful. But this is an accident, a situation unwanted and unnecessary. The flaw is not of character, but the error of judgement, a depravity of situation. There is nothing as to talk of the design of the tragedy or air solemn to tell of the impending disaster or misfortune.

He does not understand why an accident takes place. Whenever it happens, he tries to take a look at him. People gather around, blood keeps clotting on the roads. But tragedy is something different. It has the aesthetic layer of its own. The catastrophe must have a specific reference. He can imagine his feeling under what situation he is, what it is going in. Yes, yes, of course, he was a brother. There was no sin, no guilt, no hubris, no hamartia, but he had to pay for with his life. Tragedy is itself a culture. The professor means to say that it has become a culture now-a-days.

Thereafter the discussion shifts to the analysis of catharsis, hubris and hamartia. What is tragedy? What the elements of it which but the scout and traffic guides and machinists will say about now-a-days if Daruwalla has to be answered?

We do not understand it whether Daruwalla is saying in the guise of a professor or not. An M.A. in English but a police officer by profession, ruminating over his studies is the thing of our deliberation. All these things are but a routine affair for a policeman. They have nothing to repent or complain over. Here he is taking it for the sake of his poetry. There is nothing to be sentimental. Verses come to Darfuwalla as the bombastic, archaic, verbose and monologued stanzas. Daruwalla is a gunman, a Parsiman of Indian English poetry and his is a Parsi view of life. Daruwalla is quite unemotional too. Sentiment, emotion, feeling, mean it not. The heart is not the centre of his creativity, the brain is all and he labours for and struggles too for expression while taking stock of words. One who is reading him for the first time may not like him as for different spaces, Iranian, Arabic, Persian and so on apart from being Indian, drawing from the U.P. and its society, trend and tradition.

Nissim Ezekiel’s The Professor is a different one when compared with that of Keki N.Daruwalla’s The Professor Condoles. If the former is a caricature of the non-English departmental teachers with a base in their vernacular, somehow just carrying with English the latter is an Indian professor of English trying to go through Aristotle’s Poetics with regard to tragedy and its literary terms as for his study and expertise.

His style of starting the poem too is excellent, just modeled on a narrative format or dramatic enough to say it. The dramatic monologue suits it best. The poet has tagged the literary terms to turn the materials into an essay on tragedy.

If one goes through The Professor Condoles, we are sure of it that the discussion will turn one into a master of tragedies, the causes and elements of it, trying to understand it from every angle of study, palmistry, astrology, astrology, gemology and so on. That too is not complete. He will like to visit the hospitals to see the hands of the victims as Cheiro did or retaking lessons in prophecies and predictions as did Nostrodamus. Even the birds will tell about foreboding evil. The black owls, the cats and the lizards too will have a say in them.

Daruwalla after reading the poem it appears is a reader of Shakespearean tragedies, but classical tragedies, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Seneca and so on. So it is advisable to visit the fortune teller sitting with the card-picking pink-necked parrot in the cage and the man in dhoti and kurta before reading The Professor Condoles of Keki N.Daruwalla.

The whole poem appears to be a discourse on tragedy neither Shakespearean nor Galsworthyian, but Hardyian and Shawian. Had it been the Indian, we would have talked of karma and dharma, papa and punya, going by the records of Dharmaraja, the King of Religion, the Calculating Divine, the Upkeeper of Piety, the Registrar, the Record-keeper. Such a thing after the scorpion bite the masses gathered there discussed it in Nissim Ezekiel’s Night of the Scorpion giving lessons in Indian karma-dharma, papa-punya and their calculation, pluses and minuses balancing it which but was his seasoning with the question of Indianness put with regard to his quest for identity. But Daruwalla is a hard-hearted fellow using bombastic words to comprehend his notion of tragedy. Perhaps the law books he is feeling as for the rules and regulations. The accident itself contains in the elements of mishap.

Why does a mishap take place? Who can but say it? Even Daruwalla will not be able to answer it though he engages us in a discussion for which we seem to be partakers of that. There is nothing tragic than an accident. No tragedy can be a substitute for a real tragedy. Daruwalla’s heart is an Iranian heart, his myths heterogeneous.

We read Daruwalla not to be entertained, but to be taxed and laden. Daruwalla is but a poet curfew, bloodshed, death, disease and disaster. Cholera, typhoid, small pox, dengue, these are his code words. The tiger, the jackal, the fox, the wolf, the hyena, the protagonists of his poetry. Daruwalla is but Jim Corbett and Ted Hughes incarnated, the duke of Robert Browning’s The Duchess of Malfi.

As far as this poem is concerned, the professorly style of giving lectures, but following it not oneself is excellent when he keeps delivering with the words “Do you follow?” and the taught listening to him what he says, keeps hearing, contradicts it not.

The small boy’s fault was it not, but the car driver and this too cannot be ascertained. What can one about man and machines, times and situations? Who erred, whose flaw, how to say these?

As a poet he is Brechtian. The gun speaks the language of his poetry and poetry oozes out as the blood clots going out. Daruwalla is the most unsentimental of the modern Indian English poets. A hard-hearted poet, he is introspective, dramatic and peculiarly lyrical. The curtal rhythm speaks in his poetry, the thud adds to his sobriety.