The Infancy of Intuition – #Luqman

While some poets find their interests sparse and are incapable of the coherence required to develop an idea or to communicate a sentiment, others have taken a far simpler route in putting forth the object right before them. 

In this light, Umar Dada Paiko, author of the recently published poetry collection, Aphthongs, exemplifies a fusion of fractured wholes, drawing from the pastiche that presents itself to us in fragments, a willing commentator on each aspect, in its varied scope.

In ‘The Compass’, the poet asks:

Touch the world 
Do you feel its weight hibernating in it?
 Do you hear the melody of its whispers? 

We do not. With eyes shut, our limbs waltz through dense marshes and thick forests, aware of the cutting stumps but so immersed in our blindness that we cannot evade them. The world is in constant conversation with its occupants, but do they ever listen? Are they even ready to listen? Are they able to? How much of it can they pick out and what do they hear? The frequencies rise, and fall, as the wind howls or the day breaks or the sun rises.

Therefore, all of life is a dialogue with the gods, with them asking that we look to the signs and ascend and with us, complicit in the failings that trail us, vehemently refusing the call.

In subsequent lines, the poet continues

Trim dear son, your wish
 The bed is ever barren 

Now the picture is clear, not just to me but to the valiant reader whose eyes have widened and whose heart is brimming with fervent expectation, that the world is all but an illusion and our dreams fit into a utopia of other dreamers, other voyagers who while fishing for mermaids and pearls, sink at the bottom never again to surface.

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We find in the fatherly reproach a reflection of the ascetic, for whom the world is but a vessel whose purpose is transient and is only tolerated as a means to an end. Imam Al-Ghazali in his Ihya Ulum Al Deen (The Authentication of the Religious Sciences), disillusioned by the vagaries that are a motif of earthly life, said:

“The world is like a table spread for successive relays of guests who come and go. There are gold and silver dishes and an abundance of food and perfumes. The wise guest eats as much as is sufficient for him, smells the perfumes, thanks his host and departs. The foolish guest on the other hand, tries to carry off some of the gold & silver dishes, only to find them wrenched out of his hand and himself thrust forth, disappointed and disgraced.”

Thus, it is surmisable that whoever will contemplate the past eternity during which the world was not in existence and the future eternity during which it will not exist, will see that it is like a journey, in which the stages represented by years, the leagues by months, the miles by days and the steps by moments. What words then can picture the folly of a man who endeavors to make it his permanent abode and forms plans ten years ahead regarding things he may never need, seeing that possibly he may be under the ground in ten days?

Umar Dada Paiko himself tells us “the bed is ever barren”, betraying a religious sub-theme while evoking the spiritual mobility of the soul, where the earth through methodical alchemy of tests, prepares us for the eternity that awaits.

The same philosophical pandering is found in another of his poems Illusion, where he struggles to make meaning of the love-lust-lure-lie construct and the nature of the romantic call, the relationship that defines it and the carnivorous shawl that obfuscates the “wolf” from the “lamb” and vice versa. Those who cannot separate one from another are the same ones unable to distinguish “gin from water” and are thus intoxicated by the confusion that ensues. 

In sum, the entire collection is a pedestal of very human needs and we will do well to read it.