The Ethics of the Sacred in a mystic Poet
Shamim Reza's poetry is defined by an ethical and religious soul, an undoubtedly attribute of the legendary mystics of India. Gods not only summon us to sing to them, but they also ask us to share such ethics where love and sensuality are fused. That is, precisely, the great contribution of the Sufis and the Baüls. The poetry and artistic language proposed by Reza expresses the affections of a mystical land, its gods, its love for the sacred word and the sacred life that is the human life. Love is a way of expressing feelings, but also is a mechanism of philosophical and poetic knowledge. Love is a way of life: Poetry and music thus constitute an ethical way of living in community.
The poetry written by Shamin Reza means to believe in a better world, ironically, more human where we can share the gifts of the gods, a world that embraces the true life and our true nature that is our divine nature: a life that is the Yoga of being and affection. In addition, Shamin Reza's poetry recreates a realm of nostalgia, of a time that is gone, simultaneously, that precisely generates an ethics of life, to persevere in our humanity in search of the fires of the divine in this world, to persevere in the fires of the Immanence of the world:
I have smeared the viviparous liquid of Radha in the sleeping shoots of red ochre soil
And have painted the curiosity of Vishnu on my textured brows.
Yet on invisible wings of pyre, love has been eroded
In a shadowy episode the long wings vibrate through Santal dawns in hymns. ("On the Invisible Wings of Pyre").
In The Religion of Man, another ecumenical voice of love and affection, Rabindranath Tagore, states on the Baül poets, in the same tune and frequency in which I suggest reading the beautiful poems of Shamim Reza:
The Baüls do not believe in aloofness from, or renunciation of, any person or thing; their central idea is yoga, attachment to and communion with the divine and its manifestations, as the means of realization. We fail to recognize the temple of God in the bodily life of man, they explain, because its lamp is not alight (211).
Recognize the temple of God in the human form, as Rabindranath Tagore recommends, it is not only a metaphorical statement: the temple of God in the form of the human being also means to recognize the divine in the art of the humans like poetry and music. Precisely, this tradition always trendy in the oriental poetic system of thought is something that has been largely lost in the West, with few revivals in the American lyric of the sixties with the influence of the Hindu culture or in Latin America to a lesser extent with the influence of Buddhism, however the sacred has moved away, to a large extent, from Western poetic art. Shamin Reza's poetry feeds our spirit with its call to a human ethics, and it is full of a vital eroticism that is a meal for the senses: "I've seen God asleep inside me, an innocent prey / pierced with the trident of Shiva" ("God and Myself").
Reza's poetry expresses the song of a people seeking to live in peace and harmony, it is a baroque poetry that invites us to dream of the time of the sacred and the beauty of its elements from a foot to the waters of a river. The eroticism of the poetry of Shamim Reza reminds me of the eroticism of the poetry of Octavio Paz, a great love poet and cultist of literary eroticism that he, precisely, discovered in the poetic tradition of the East. Poetry is universal and communicates and unites cultures:
Shiva and Parvati:
the woman who is my wife
and I
ask you for nothing, nothing
that comes from the other world:
only
the light on the sea,
the barefoot light on the sleeping land and sea. ("Invocation," Octavio Paz)
This poetic breath where the sacred and the erotic merge to propose an ethics and pedagogy is very similar to the great poetry of Shamim Reza. The poetry of Shamim Reza is rich in cultural references of the different confessions of the Indian Subcontinent, but also is generous in metaphors and images that invite us to dance and merge with our fellow human beings in a culture of peace and sensitivity that is the reflection of the other, of our brothers, the community of human beings.
Enrique Bernales is an Associate Professor at the University of Northern Colorado.
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