Me Before Me and Other Poems

M. Harunur Rashid’s ‘Me Before Me and Other Poems’ is seemingly a continuous renewal of interwoven utterances of an individual soul moving from Earth to Heaven in a single moment which he visualizes as eternity. Mystic in essence he views the origin as a seed, both tangible and intangible, undergoing a constant metamorphosis from one structure to another. Under the earth this seed sleeps, then dissolves and disintegrates, and then completely vanishes in an instinctive stage called ‘fana, marking the end of all earthly desires as well as perpetual resurrection of an indestructible universal soul. This is not a poet’s magical or musical realism, rather infinite insight of a self-digging philosopher. To him, ‘Me’is the beginning and Me is the end, there being nothing beyond. His sayings are mostly metaphoric and dialectic exploring messages of his own. It’s a world, strangely belonging to this poet-philosopher.