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Seasons of Being "I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all days he says over and over, just like you: ‘I am busy with matters of consequence!’ And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man — he is a mushroom!" (The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery) Daljit Jaijee’s poems read like pages from a personal diary, the main theme being love or the lack of it. It also reminds you — with its ample use of now obsolete ‘poetic’ words like anon, lest, eventide and tarry — of someone brought up on ladlefuls of romantic poetry. Most of the poems are expressions of pain, regret and despair painted on the pages in dark and sombre tones. They read like innocent secrets of a child who has held them close to the heart for long and now lays them bare in an age of little emotion and almost no poetry. For the most part in almost all love poems, the poet is a moon to a strong sun that has now ‘slithered under the horizon’, such is her self-efficacy and humility. Although there is an interesting turn of phrase here and there, the poet and her poems, for all their feminine charm, belong best to the fairy tale age of innocence. But you know for sure that she has smelled a flower, looked at a star and loved someone. |
