of both cultural and national languages of, his vocabulary and command of the rules of both languages being in equal measure masterly. Some of his works, a few non-literary texts, were also crafted in English. Pazhwak's literary oeuvre is composed of poems on the one hand and prose on the other. The division in the categories of prose and poetry only in a limited manner sums up the stylistic diversity and plurality of genre that is evidenced in Pazhwak's work. This point will become clear in the following section. Pazhwak's poetic works are simultaneously testimony to his considerable literary flexibility and his masterly command of the rules of both classical and modern poetry. A large part of poems penned by Pazhwak were crafted in the neo-classical style (sabk-i klasik-i mu‘abbar ) including the poems that appear in the collections Cand Shi‘r az Pazhwak (1963), Gulha-yi Andisha (1965) and Banu-yi (‘The Lady of Balkh’, 2001). Pazhwak was a qualified connoisseur of the classical literature of his cultural realm. In his neo-classical poetry, he draws on a source of regularly-appearing poetic imagery and motifs, at times adding new ones to them. The reader encounters general themes and motifs concerning humanity for example faith and grief or love, hope and joy. Many of the poems carry traits of classical Persian poetry. In such poems, Pazhwak on the one hand makes use of current formal schemata of classical Persian poetry such as ghazal, qasida, masnawi, ruba‘i and du-bayti. ‘ Abdul Ghafur Rawan Farhadi, a connoisseur of Afghan poetry and of Pazhwak’s poetry in particular, makes the following comparison: "Pazhwak’s ghazals bring to mind memories of Rudaki, Sa‘di, the divan of Shams, Hafez and Sa‘ib and his qasida and masnavi resemble those of Farrokh, Mawlana Balkhi and Iqbal Lahori."[10] These are the names of distinguished poets of classical Persian poetry, with Iqbal being the only poet to have lived later, having died in 1938. Their works have functioned as an endless fountain of inspiration for generations of poets who emerged later. For example, Pazhwak wrote the following verse: Stand up inn keeper and fill the cup with wine, It is said that spring has arrived, how much longer will you remain asleep?[11] In writing this, he was making use of important ingredients of classical, eastern, Islamic poetry – for example wine (badah/mai/sharab), love (‘ishq), inn keeper (saqi) and beloved (dust/mahbub) – which were already known