A dash of poetry . . .

Poetry is an ageless experience. There is about it a timelessness that you cannot quite ignore. And that is because poets, being the unacknowledged legislators of the world they are, in Shelley's famous formulation, transcend time and space to ensure their commonality of passion about life and all that it is reflective of.
And that precisely is the message Shahabuddin Nagri means to put across in The Black Cat and Other Poems. Over the years, Nagri has demonstrated a degree of intellectual versatility which often leaves you surprised in a pretty refreshing way. He sings, he writes essays on varied themes and, of course, he composes poetry. In this sleek work, the aesthetic charm of which has certainly been heightened by the cover, the sense dawns that Nagri's poetic peregrinations cover a long, sometimes lengthening landscape of experience. Take, for instance, the poem Barkat's Grave, where a necessary awareness of history is what the poet goes for. The solemnity says it all.
The solemnity endures, in such short, painful poems as Death News, where a friend must be told of the passing of his parent. 'Come back friend, we will share all the clouds of sky with you', intones the poet. Empathy is all here. Your loss is also that of your friend. And, to be sure, there is loss of a greater, more sinister magnitude. In Machine Unreadable Passport at Frankfurt Airport, it is a story of embarrassment the poet stumbles into. The machine at the airport cannot read his passport. Questions rise about the authenticity of the visa stamped therein. Something clicks in your mind. Isn't that a fear we share, we who go out into the world as proud Bengalis, only to be humiliated into the knowledge that there is something terribly wrong back home.
But poetry being the wide canvas it always is, Nagri moves on into other, wider spheres of thought. Love? Certainly it is there and the poet deals with it in the way we have done across time. Read: 'I entered love lyric in your cell phone / Take it up with your kisses, touch every word / And hundreds of bits of pains hidden in it . . .'

Read on.

Syed Badrul Ahsan edits Star Books Review.