The New Nation - Internet Edition

Thomas O. Morgan

In his excellent new book, Madonna of the Rain, Rabiul Hasan has awarded his readers with an interesting combination of love and darkness, life and death, which creates exciting new images within their juxtaposition. The poems, proudly personal, belie their romantic subject with masterful restraint in quiet observation. Such refreshing reminiscence bathes the reader in joy and pain, completing the core insinuation of the book: Love and death overlap.

In ''Night Piece" the persona, a "scraggy figure" toddles in the "empty" countryside of Mississippi, "shaving off the dark," displaying attractive images of darkness, depression and death. He also, however, scoops up "fallen stars, flints and fireflies," in a romantic way, whimsically unaware of his direction in this empty world. Certainty the images are so poignant that they are almost tangible. The ache is real.

Another poem, "Summer Evenings in the Mississippi Delta," engages the night as well. Here the "fields heavy with muffled sound," suggests the depression of oncoming night. What pain is associated with dark: a dog in a garbage truck, two Negro "shadows" next to "hogsties," magnolias dying? And how restrained is the author who only remarks directly on the "glowing" eyes of the buzzing insects.

When Hasan presents us with "Checking on Barn at Night," he again uses darkness to demonstrate the romantic attraction to death. Here there are cold and snow, a solemn barn, all symbols of death, but he immediately applies to this a recognition of gold and happiness. They are found "asleep in vast silence" (death wish?) "They are like/nestlings secure in their mothers' breasts." When the persona enters the barn (storage place for the gathered dead and the implements for their deaths), he knows and loves "these which are there", they are "eyes gouged out of the plants," (What an image!).

In "On a Moonlit December Night Near Charleston, Mississippi" Hasan again romances us with the beauty of nature at night. His images are vivid and his attraction to night "in December" is again remarkable. His night is "dipped into ashes of snow," and yet he is having a wonderful time experiencing a "long, empty, winding road ending up nowhere." In this wonderland he will "not let sleep creep" into his eyes. Sleep would destroy his appreciation of this natural attraction to death of the "Orchard by the Tallahatchie."

Another poem, "A Dream of a Fair Woman on a Late October Evening," combines his beautiful imagery with his attraction to life (the woman) and death (the night). The persona has been "low-spirited" during the day. In his dream he dashes for the outside, for nature, for life, for the woman. Snows suddenly fall, gray, old, dead. We ask whether he sees two horses mating or fighting, either of which would connote life in this death. Their manes are "dark, icy", another view of life in death is thus displayed. Within this scene the persona recognises the image of the sky (life) above him: "The sun is the moon is an embroidered quilt over my head." Meanwhile he waits expectantly for "one" (how well and deftly he avoids the explicit) to come "plodding through the snow." It is this natural environment in which he will find himself, or love, and escape his unhappiness.

In "December Snow" Hasan romanticises "the velvet shroud thick on the ground," the gaping clouds/glide past the glittering moon," the "Grasses" are "stiff/under the surge of white." We are reminded of Dickenson's chariot when his ''chariot of winter" passes through the lonely, quiet forest. And who are the figures observed in the ice and snow, those actively involved, not just watching from the protected interior? Which is preferable? After all, he exhorts, repeats, "keep the windows open."

"After the Rain" forgets the snow, but observes the rain in the night this time, at least the ambience after the rain. One notices that everything is gray, that the sky is empty. This time, however, the lush abundance is extolled. There is "wind through the swollen fields." It's interesting that "faces grow/Thin as daylight fades toward the dimming west," People lose substance, life, as night approaches. The summary is found in the old, lonely man walking slow home, perhaps to death.

In "Snowfall in Columbus, Mississippi," the persona anticipates night (death). His home is green (alive), but nature fades around him as night falls. He recognizes the danger glistening "In the dark like a cat's eye as moonlight breaks out." The barn door of the house of death that we encountered before "slams shut." It is interesting that the green house " moves nearer to what is shaping in the air." Ultimately, he watches as his body "empties its bones to the white cold." He readies himself for the end.

"The Death of P:aris" is Hasan's final address to death. If the persona is comparing himself to the abductor of Helen, the coward who killed Achilles, he is stepping out of character. He is more likely, however, anticipating instead the ultimate death at the hands of Hercules, son of Zeus, in the ninth year of the Trojan War, the penultimate year of the conflict. If so, the chopped moon, the night, the shadows, the hole, the town sinking and darkness are all the penultimate end. Our persona thus waits for someone-something to end experience.

Considering the similarity of the images of dark, rain, ice, snow and emptiness one might surmise that these poems deal with loss and death. When the poet combines them with a romantic attraction to nature we might argue that he is expressing a death wish, a desire to return to Mother Earth (his Madonna?) We can only hope that such a wish will be a long time coming.

--All quoted references in this essay refer to poems in Rabiul Hasan, Madonna of the Rain. Rockfield, II: Rockford Writers' Guild Press, 2008.

(Thomas O Morgan is a poet and an Assistant Professor of English at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.)