Goya is Jaun Elia`s fifth collection of poems. `Shayad` was published in Jaun`s lifetime. `Yaanee` came months after Jaun`s death in 2002.Khalid Ansari has edited Jaun`s ghazals and nazms in three consecutive collections, namely Gumaan, Laykin and now Goya. Jaun`s total collection now spreads over five volumes with 480 ghazals and 150 nazms.

Goya contains 100 ghazals and 20 nazms. The ghazals reflect Jaun`s typical themes of cerebral love, agnosticism, pessimism and a very deep sense of inner loneliness

(Nobody calls me on the street/ I am a man with no name, my heart is uninvolved).

(I go on talking to myself about myself/ My throat is all wounded, I do not need you, go away).

(You are obstructing me, how strange/ Let me stop here to see the sight of my fall)

The ghazals in Goya are in characteristic Jaun tradition. Yet three poems are most striking in this collection. The first is the lamentation on the lack of conscience among Jaun`s contemporary writers.

(O, my city, you writers are wtihout any conscience/ We, who are great, are without any conscience)

Another masterpiece dates back to the late 1950s, when Jaun heard the news that his favourite personality in Amroha, the city in India where he hailed from, Hakeem Achchoo had died at the hands of a mad man.

The third poem is a masterpiece of spontaneity in how a poet`s heart throbs in unison with the mood of the people. On the evening of December 16, 1971, on the fall of Dhaka, Jaun Elia was asked to come to the studios and write something on Pakistan`s darkest moment of national grief.

He arrived at the studio at 9 pm just as the Khabarnama was beginning. He was warned that he would be called as soon as the Khabarnama ended as the recital was meant to be a live telecast. And in his characteristic style, Elia produced a 49-line poem that he wrote in about 30 minutes.

Goya
A collection of poems by Jaun Elia
Al-Hamd Publications, Lahore
308pp. Rs300