''The Harvest Season of Love Songs'' (pub 1996/1997) is a true 'tour de force' by Omar Tarin (or Omer Tarin as also spelt sometime) . Few long epic poems of this sort have been written in contemporary times, and perhaps its nearest literary 'relative' is either Walt Whitman's ''Leaves of Grass'' (1855) or Pablo Neruda's ''Canto General'' (1949/1950) -- yet, at another level, it surpasses both these works, and approaches the mystic depths of the Punjabi ''Heer Waris Shah'' or Hazrat e Maulana Jalaudin Rumi's ''Masnavi e Manavi''. By any universal standards, this is a work which amazes, instructs and guides. A must-read for any serious literature reader anywhere.

Omar Tarin (or Omer Tarin, in some editions) is a well-known poet, scholar and mystic from Pakistan, South Asia. In this volume of poetry (orig. published 1997, Islamabad) he presents a sweeping, epic vision of South Asian culture and history, and places man within this vast space of epochs and events. It is a wonderful, lyrical work, divided into some 10 movements or cantos, and each canto interlinks with the others into a unified whole; awash with the mystic spirit of the great Sufis of the region and a plethora of images from history itself, from nature, phenomenology, folklore and myth and much more. It is a book of poetry that sings out to us with a voice both free and bold and allows us to soar with it, into regions hitherto unknown.