|
Citation |
- Permanent Link:
- http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00080046/00022
Material Information
- Title:
- Kyk-over-Al
- Uniform Title:
- Bim
- Portion of title:
- Kyk over Al
- Portion of title:
- Kyk
- Portion of title:
- Kykoveral
- Creator:
- British Guiana Writers' Association
Kykoveral (Guyana)
- Place of Publication:
- Georgetown Guyana
- Publisher:
- s.n.
- Publication Date:
- -2000
- Frequency:
- Two no. a year
semiannual regular
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- v. : ; 23 cm.
Subjects
- Subjects / Keywords:
- Guyanese literature -- Periodicals ( lcsh )
Caribbean literature (English) -- Periodicals ( lcsh )
- Genre:
- review ( marcgt )
periodical ( marcgt ) serial ( sobekcm )
- Spatial Coverage:
- Guyana
Notes
- Dates or Sequential Designation:
- Began in 1945?
- Dates or Sequential Designation:
- -49/50 (June 2000).
- Numbering Peculiarities:
- Publication suspended, 19 -1983.
- Issuing Body:
- Issued by: British Guiana Writers' Association, 1945-19 ; Kykoveral, 1985-
- General Note:
- Vol. for Apr. 1986 called also golden edition that includes anthology of selections from nos. 1-28 (1945-1961).
- General Note:
- Description based on: No. 30 (Dec. 1984); title from cover.
Record Information
- Source Institution:
- University of Florida
- Rights Management:
- All applicable rights reserved by the source institution and holding location.
- Resource Identifier:
- 12755014 ( OCLC )
86649830 ( LCCN ) 1012-5094 ( ISSN )
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Nos. 33 and 34- Edited by A. J. SEYMOUR and IAN McDONALD
THE GOLDEN KYK
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION:-"'
Literature in the Making : The Contributio'c.lKvyk-Over-AI '.
-A. J. Seymour '
E. K. BRATHWAITHE: Piano; The Blu6; Solo for TrumM:
Interlude for Alto Saxophone (No. 27. 1. 60).
GEORGE CAMPBELL: Holy: History Makers: Worker
(No. 22, 1957). 15
OWEN CAMPBELL: The Washerwomen (No. 22, 1957). 16
JAN CAREW: Manarabisi (No. 19, 1954). ...... 17
MARTIN CARTER : Bare Night Without Comfort; Who Walks a
Pavement; The Kind Eagle; All of a Man; The Discovery of
Companion (No. 15, 1952); Death of a Slave (No. 14, 1952);
Three'Poems of Shape aid Sequence (No. 20, 1955); The
University of Hunger (No. 17, 1953): .... 18
FRANK COLLYMORE: Hymn to the Sea (No. 14, 1952). ... 27
OSWALD DURAND: Choucoune (No. 16, 1953). .... 28
WILSON HARRIS : Agamemnon (No. 15, 1952); Death of
Hector; The Stone of the Sea; Charcoal; Troy (No. 22, 1957) 30
ROY HEATH :......The Peasants (No. 17, 1953). .. 35
CECIL HERBERT : Song; And the Pouis Sing (No. 22, 1957). 36
E. McG. KEANE : To .... (No. 14, 1952); My Love Are You
Strong (N. 22, 1957). .... 37
ETIENNE LERO: He Left Today (No. 15, 1952). .. 38
JEAN JOSEPH RABEARIVELO: Poem (No. 16, 1953) ... 39
GEORGES DESPORTES : We Have Abandoned (No. 15, 1952). 39
LEOPOLD SEDAR-SENGHOR : And We Shall Bathe (No. 15,
1952); The Hurricane (No. 16, 1963). .. 40
ATME CESAIRE: Sun Serpent (No. 15, 1952), The Wheel
(No. 26, 1959)... 41
GEORGE LAMMING: Swans; Birthday Poem For Clifford
Scaly (No. 14, 1952). .. 42
LEO (EGBERT MARTIN): The Swallow (No. 5. 1947); Themes
of Song; Twilight (No. 19, 1954). 45
WALTER MacA. LAWRENCE: Kaieteur (No. 19, 1954) ... 47
ROGER MAIS : I, Shall Wait for the Moon to Rise (No. 20, 1955). 47
WORDSWORTH McANDREW : To a Carrion Crow (No. 27,
1960). -.. 48
HILDA McDONALD : Evensong (No. 14, 1952). .,.; 49
IAN McDONALD: Pineapple Woman; Son Asleep-Aged Six
Months (No. 28, 1961). ...... 49
BASIL McFARLANE : Poem; Jacob and the Angel (No. 14, 1952). 51
EDWINA MELVILLE: Poem (No. 17, 1953). ...... 52
EDGAR MITTELHOLZER: Meditations of a Man Slightly
Drunk (No. 20, 1955). 53
E. M. ROACH : To My Mother; I am the Archipelago; Home-
stead; Poem (No. 22, 1957). ... 53
W. ADOLPHE ROBERTS: On a Monument to Marti (No.
22, 1957). 57
A. J. SEYMOUR: Sun is a Shapely Fire (No. 14, 1952); There
Runs a Dream (No. 19, 1954); Name Poem (No. 2, 1946);
Tomorrow Belongs to the People (No. 3, 1946). ...... 58
PHILIP M. SHERLOCK: Pocomania (No. 14, 1952). .. 62
M. G. SMITH: Mellow Oboe (No. 14, 1952). ..... 63
HAROLD M. TELEMAQUE : Roots; Poem (No. 14, 1952). 64
H. A. VAUGHAN: Dark Voices; Revelation (No. 14, 1952)...... 66
DEREK WALCOTT: The Yellcw Cemetery; A City's Death by
Fire (No. 14, 1952); As John to Patmis (No. 22, 1957) :..: 66
DANIEL WILLIAMS: Over Here (No.. 22, 1957). .. 70
MILTON WILLIAMS: Oh! Prahalad Dedicated Day; Pray
for Rain (No. 23, 1958). ..., 71
FICTION, TRAVELOGUE, HISTORY :-
P. H. DALY : Christmas in the Ninteen-Twenties (No. 21, 1955). 73
VERE T. DALY: The Story of Kykoveral (No. 1, 1945). .:.'. 78
CELESTE DOLPHIN: Waramurie (No. 6, 1948). .... 83
WILSON HARRIS: Fences Upon the Earth (No. 4, 1947) ... 86
ROGER MAIS: The Springing (No. 20, 1955). ...... 90
SHEIK M. SADEEK : The Symphony of Mazaruni (No. 12, 1952). 94
ARTICLES AND REVIEWS:-
JOY ALLSOPP : Philip Pilgrim's Legend of Kaieteur (No. 20, 1955). 99
E. R. BURROWES: Old Wine in New Wineskins (No. 8, 1949). 101
LILIAN DEWAR: Simey on Education (No. 7, 1948). ..... 104
EDNA MANLEY: Art in the West Indies (No. 5, 1947). ...... 108
EDGAR MITTELHOLZER: Literary Criticism and the
Creative Writer (No. 15, 1952). ..... 116
A. J. SEYMOUR: The Books of Guiana (No. 27, 1960) .... 120
D. A. WESTMAAS: On Writing Croolese (No. 7, 1948) ...... 128
DENIS WILLIAMS: Guiana Today (No. 9,1949). ..... 131
FRED WILMOT: Roger Mais (No. 20, 1955). .... 134
ALLAN YOUNG : On Writing History An Administrative
View (No. 23, 1958). ...... 139
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES' : 143
LITERATURE IN THE MAKING -
THE CONTRIBUTION OF KYKOVERAL
by
ARTHUR J. SEYMOUR
The biography of a magazine includes the consideration of the part it
played in the making of a national literature which is still incomplete although
it has some considerable body.
First the basic narrative. KYK started in 1945 as the organ of the British
Guiana Writers Association, and gradually assumed the responsibility for printing
the more important lectures and discussions of the British Guiana Union of
Cultural Clubs. This was possible because the editor was also the honorary
secretary of the Union of Clubs. Then the Writers Association ceased to meet,
and later the Union of Cultural Clubs fell apart, leaving the editor to pursue
the development of the magazine without clients of any sort. The editor was
himself at first staff member and then the head of the Government Information
Services and therefore committed to providing facts and information to all.
He was himself a poet and looking back, it appears that without his being very
conscious of it, he was seeking to make a distinction in his poetry of a public
voice and a private voice. So here is the editor as a primary resource.
A word now about the function of a Little Review or literary magazine
since this type of magazine has a history of its own. The little review is
important in the world of literature and particularly in the English language
as a contemporary record of trends in new writing, that would otherwise receive
little attention. In the 1945 Little Reviews Anthology, the English poet-editor
Denys Val Barker points out that over the past two centuries in England,
there is one long story of writers, later to become famous, making their first
appearance in print among small and unknown magazines. The little review
is valuable and important since it can print new forms of writing which are
too revolutionary for the popular press to notice except in a glancing fashion.
For example, the novel Ulysses by James Joyce had to come out in the little
reviews before conditions for book publication could be created. A little review
is also produced by a writer who finds that he has something to say of an un-
orthodox, controversial or visionary nature. D. H. Lawrence published his own
magazine Signature in this way.
In the regional sense, the Little Review is important, to express a growing
nationalism. Hugh MacDiarmid, one of Scotland's leading national poets, un-
popular with other editors because of his strong nationalistic and socialistic
approach, found it necessary to bring out his own magazine Voice of Scotland
and we have magazines with the names of Wales and Welsh Review to cater
for regional ambitions.
During the 1939/45 war, we also had Little Reviews devoted to the
literature of countries overrun by enemy forces Free France, Belgian Mes-
sage, Czech Review, Greek Hellas and so on.
There was also a special type of little review which developed the
book anthology or book magazine. These looked like magazines but were books.
Men and women in the British Military Services brought out anthologies -
Bugle Blast, Khaki and Blue, and Air Force Poetry. The same was true of short
stories, published in little review collections.
Looking back after many years, the editor was only vaguely conscious
of some of these events, in England, a faraway centre of Empire. The editor was
only vaguely conscious also of many of the social forces operating in Guyana
in the 1940's although looking back, it is evident what had taken place.
In the first place, national health had become much better; it was in 1946,
at the end of the war, that Dr. Giglioli and D.D.T. had come together to break
the scourge of malaria, and people no longer had to suffer from crippling fevers.
There was new American money coming into the country from the construction
of the Air Base at Atkinson and at the Naval Base at Makouria. People were eating
more meat so the diet had improved. Harold Stannard had come to Guyana and
encouraged intellectual curiosity and had put creative intelligence in touch
with one another in the Caribbean region especially with Trinidad, Barbados
and Jamaica. The Union of Cultural Clubs that he had encouraged was focus-
sing attention on the development of the arts and the discussion of cultural
values in a planned deliberate and sustained fashion. This meant a gathering of
interest and support that unified the native elite in the country, and a possible
leadership in the country was coming into existence to discuss the intellectual
material written by their peers. By chance there were at least three poets
important by national standards who had begun to write in Guyana and to
maintain a fellowship of poetic and critical imagination in the 1940's.
At the end of the war, there were suddenly available good inexpensive
paperback books in the Penguin Series, making a revolution at that time in
reading in England and America. So the community was open to influences
from abroad in a liberal way. Linkages with groups in the West Indies began
to appear with the little review Focus in Jamaica edited by Edna Manley, with
Bim in Barbados edited by Frank Collymore and Therold Barnes.
There were also deeper social forces at work, now that one can look
back and analyse. In the small community of likeminded people, a strong
contact was being forged between the magazine and the society, and a shape,
a character of being Guyanese was being given to the society. The free play
of mind upon ideas helped a blossoming of what we call literature, and the
description of areas of cultural values and an inventory of the condition of the
arts helped the focussing of common concern and openness to ideas. The
symposia (many of them came later rather than earlier in the biography of
the magazine) encouraged progressive thinking, even though contributors held
diverse views in social and religious matters. But the very clash was important.
In this creation of a literary and intellectual leadership, there was an
unconscious groping towards a position in which the community wanted to
maintain the tradition mediated from England to the British West Indies by
our colonial past and to see how it could be married to all the cultural elements
in the community that were quickening to birth. We did not have a name for
it then, but it was what is called the process of cultural pluralism and national
unity.
What was this tradition that we inherited? It was part of the European
heritage leading back to the Greeks, the Romans and the Hebrews, and came
as part of our educational patrimony. With the English language came standards
in literature and criticism. We laid great store by this legacy and consciousness,
and we wanted it included in the new Guyana to be born, since we would
continue to use the English language. The question in our minds perhaps un-
asked, was how we could take this old colonial world and remake it into our own
nation. We were conscious also that many of our members had religions and
therefore cultural values based upon their links with India and others on links
with Africa.
We asked the question, what is there in our past as Guyanese to which we
could give common pride? What were the things that united us rather than the
things that divided us? We wanted to move away from this old world to make a
new world. The old world was still alive and the new world was not yet born.
We were not without some roots. There were the Dutch historical past,
the mythologically valuable Amerindian present, and in some vague way all of
us felt that we could somehow claim those roots and bring them into literary
and cultural production. Vaguely too, we felt that linkages with the West Indies
and others there thinking like ourselves would help to make this new world
be realized.
Remember that the editor is speaking from a web of reflection and
memory that looks backwards to see the roads travelled by thinking and arti-
culate people in Guyana over the past 40 years. We did not know it then, but
we were placing an intellectual and cultural apex on the traditional colonial
pyramid. There was no university, but the University College of the West
Indies, especially through its Extra Mural Department, was beginning to make
its influence felt in Guyana. It was the inner necessity and urge to freedom that
we were paying attention to. So we focused on the human condition in Guyana,
the here and now of our world.
The value of a magazine like Kyk lies not in its age, but its purpose. The
responsibility and duty of a third world magazine is to name the here and now,
to summon up the values of the past that are embedded in the soil and its
history, and to point to the future from today's discernible trends. One aspect
of the urge to freedom is the ability to choose from among several possibilities.
An editor can request the prose writings to put in his pages and they will be
the fruit of the conscious mind, but we must remember that the poetry he
prints is the expression of what is secret and internal, since the age is about to
make its statements and announce its values through the poets.
Early in its pages in 1945 and 1948, Kyk declared its aims "an instru-
ment to help forge a Guyanese people, make them conscious of their intellectual
and spiritual possibilities build some achievement of common pride in the
literary world make an act of possession of our environment. We so
desperately want to be rooted in the European soil, that is the only earth avail-
able.. the accident of forced immigration into the Caribbean has isolated us
to the impact of a dying civilization so that we can pass on some flaming torch
higher up the line."
L. E. Brathwaite reviewing Kyk in 1966 against these aims felt that the
magazine had not been radical or revolutionary enough, that there had not been
enough analyses. He however observed that then there had been disagreement
with the editor's concept and point of view. He notes the magazine moves from
a purely Guyanese to a West Indian position with the setting up of the University
College of the West Indies, and became aware towards the end, of the importance
of African Culture in the region. He saw as valuable the translated poems of
French West Indian and African poets and the special issues on West Indian
Literature, Pen Portraits of important West Indians, anthologies of Guyanese
and West Indian poetry, the Cities of the Caribbean, Guyanese Christmas, the
Theatre in British Guiana and the Artist in Society. He felt that the poetry of
the main Guyanese poets and the introduction of a radical and critical element
were valuable.
I wish to add certain personal points of view. There were many problems
facing the Editor of Kykoveral. Appointed by his peers in the Writers' Associa-
tion to take charge of the magazine, he had to conduct the business of the pub-
lication in accordance with the agreed aims and with his own standards of
excellence developing these as he went along, following his vision of the future
in the formulation of his plans for successive issues, weighing the ability and
the willingness of his possible contributors, expressing the spirit of the contents
in his leading articles, gauging the relationship between the periodical and his
developing audiences at home and abroad, moving out from a limited Guyanese
writing core to the wider regional contribution and discussion of ideas by fellow
writers of quality in the West Indies, making possible the circulation of these
ideas while they were still fresh, articulating always as best he could the spirit of
the times in thought and sensibility, and with growing support and confidence
playing a creative part in the literary, intellectual and cultural growth of the
country and the region.
As this development of editorial philosophy took place other problems
arose. As noted already, the British Guiana Writers' Association ceased to
exist; then the British Guiana Union of Cultural Clubs ceased to meet. As I
became the editor of a magazine without bases, my own responsibilities as a
Senior Civil Servant deepened, various difficulties arose in securing advertise-
ments, the climate of opinion among the ablest minds in the country changed
imperceptibly from tolerance to internal divisions and to commitments and pre-
possessions on the political scene, in the region the Federation of the West Indies
began to falter and fail in its stride, horizons everywhere began to narrow and
there was a gradual closing of mental frontiers to the circulation and influence
of those ideas of breath and richness of which I had been a champion. I feel sure
that there always exists a regional fraternity of men of letters within the Carib-
bean indeed I was to experience contact with that fraternity during my years
with the Caribbean Organisation and to sample this curiosity and openness of
mind to new ideas without hostility but with the beginning of the 1960's it
was clear that national loyalties and differences of political philosophy were
affecting the existence of periodicals such as Kykoveral.
There is a special relationship between a magazine and an editor. In
Australia, for example, the critic H. M. Green, pointed out that over the period
1900-1950 in three instances, The Bookfellow edited by Stephens, The Lone Hand
by Archibald and the little review The Triad dealing with literary, artistic and
musical matters which migrated from New Zealand to Australia, these maga-
zines were kept alive only by the vision and perseverance of the editors. This
would be true also of Kyk. Contributors had to be coaxed, cajoled, and reminded
in many instances, and they still did not produce the promised contribution, in
which case the editor has to decide whether or not he will write the piece himself
so that the magazine will come out as planned. The relationship eventually can
become that of an anxious mother and a child.
So in 1962 when the editor moved from Guyana to Puerto Rico as a
political casualty, the magazine went to sleep. Since 1945 there has been a great
change in the climate of literary opinion and in Guyana and the West Indies
talents that had been active in the 1940's had moved into politics. There was that
disillusionment also in the wake of the breakup of the West Indian Federation.
Who had been the main readers and supporters of Kyk in its 17 years of
existence? Writers themselves, the middle class, middle-brow people in the city
like clergymen, teachers, doctors, musicians, lawyers, merchants and clerks. The
contributors had been involved in a number of symposia on themes like the
spirit of man, the responsibility of the artist to the community, remembrances
of Christmas from the view-points of living in London, New York, Jamaica; the
arts in Guyana, children and their values, is there a West Indian way of life,
greatness and bitterness, standards of criticism and several on reading meaning
into a poem. These brought readers into involvement and made them into con-
tributors.
There was a strong section on book reviews. Books that could make any
contribution to the Guyanese way of life were made the subject of reviews and
there was a wide net of persons who responded with a personal reaction to the
books which found a place in the magazine.
Some years ago, a German Literature student prepared an index to
Kykoveral over the period 1945-1961 under eight sections Fiction, Drama,
Poetry, articles on literature and language, articles on history and culture. Mis-
cellaneous articles, Symposia Colloquia, and editorial notes. It was published in
the magazine World Literature Written in English, Nov. 1977. The Editor went
through the pages, 40 in all and realized that this was the distillation of several
years of his creative life. The 16 pages of the names of poets and poems, epito.
mised his relationships with many men and women, some of whom he had never
seen.
For example, it was a letter from Miriam Koshland in California that
brought translations of the poetry of Senghor, Cesaire, Lero and Rabearivelo.
Meeting Philip Sherlock, Clare McFarlane and his sons in Jamaica brought an
input of Jamaican poets. The St. Vincent star soloists, Keane, Campbell and
Williams, Telemaque of Trinidad, E. M. Roach from Tobago, Derek Walcott
from St. Lucia, Frank Collymore and H. A. Vaughn and later Eddie Brathwaite
from Barbados, all had sent poems to Kyk, but always Wilson Harris and Martin
Carter could be relied upon to send in poems to be printed.
As I looked at the Index, I realized that Kykoveral is a prism of silver
crystal which has attracted and held glowing images and ideas from more than
150 contributors over 17 years and mingled them into a jewel of memory of
indescribable richness, now flashing in radiant light and now colours of heaving
and seething blue and green and yellow for the delight and development of
thousands of its readers. It's lovely to know that this jewel was once in my hand.
*
FOR KYKOVERAL
Here in my hands I hold
This happy jewel
These glowing dreams I forged
In a hard school
Visions and memories
Their blessings radiate
And many a blessing more
On new eyes wait.
My life's blood, others too,
This jewel holds
Transformed and caught in words
Glinting with gold
And when with dust my eyes
Finally close
Still with our happiness
This jewel glows.
Based on an offprint from the Guyana Library Association Bulletin, vol. 9, No. 2, 1980.
ASSAYING FOR A GOLDEN KYK
by IAN McDONALD
Helping to choose what should go into this issue of a "Golden Kyk" I
thought might be a time-consuming chore. It turned out to be a time-enriching
experience.
The first good thing I did was decide to read right through all 28 issues
of the old series of Kyk produced between December 1945 when No. 1 appeared
and December 1961. I might have done it differently and cut corners by con-
centrating attention for the most part on the well-known Kyk anthologies: of
Guyanese poetry (No. 19) and of West Indian poetry (No. 14 and No. 22). These,
after all, would contain ore sifted and refined by experts to a purity already
worthy enough for a "Golden Kyk". All that might then be necessary would be
to anthologise the anthologies.
It is a good thing for me that I didn't pursue that slightly dishonest
course. By reading through all 28 issues I came across countless items that
first held my attention, then captured my interest, and ended up considerably
widening and deepening my education. I intended spending not much more than
a few hours speed-reading through these old magazines in order to get an
instant overview of what appeared to me the best things so that I could make
a list which I could then check against the magisterial opinion of AJS, editor
ever since the creation of Kyk and still going strong. Instead I spent many,
many swiftly passing hours reading right through poems, stories and articles,
most of which might not be candidates for "Gold" but which were all the same
fascinating in their own right. Indeed the material so intrigued me that I
found myself putting down even Isabel Allende's great novel "The House of the
Spirits", which I had just been given as a special treasure, in order to
concentrate on this marvellous old Kyk stuff still so full of life and lessons.
A complete sampler of the instruction and pleasure I derived would stretch
for pages. It would certainly include all of Wilson Harris's long-ago poems
which distinguished many early Kyks. I don't know to what extent Wilson, in
these days of his special fame as a novelist of deep and complex significance,
would acknowledge these poems as anything more than apprentice work but they
certainly delighted me. Then, quite apart from his poetry, there were the
articles, editorials and reviews, issue after issue, by AJS on scores of different
cultural themes and personalities. These would themselves make up a valu-
able anthology if they were collected and published. Sometimes the briefest
of notices like Vincent Roth's "Six Most Outstanding Men in British
Guiana's History" whetted the appetite for much more. Very often a line or
two from a long forgotten poem sparkled a small fire in the heart. Personalities
from the past I hardly knew about came to life: Harold Stannard, for instance,
a British Council man, who comes through the years as a wonderfully "complete
humanist" in the collection of tributes to him in Kyk No. 6. There was a
series of vignettes on Caribbean capital cities 33 years ago which are fascina-
ting to read today and made me think how interesting it would be to have a new
series written for a new generation. Issue No. 23 (June 1959) was devoted
entirely to the theatre. It brought special delight and gave impetus to the
idea of preparing an up-to-date issue on the theatrical scene in Guyana today.
With a start of pleased recognition I came across in Kyk No. 24 (June 1958)
extract from an early version of my own novel "The Hummingbird Tree" which
was finally published in 1970. How swiftly time passes before concept becomes
conclusion, if it ever does!
Even the advertisements in the old issues I found had nostalgic value as
they extolled the merits of Ferrol Compound ("Conquer That Obstinate Cough"),
the Portuguese Mutual Pawnbroking Company, Bookers Hardware, the Argosy,
and Raleigh the All-Steel Bicycle. And I noted with amazement the price of a
copy of Kyk in 1950. One shilling! Eighty times cheaper, I regret to say, than the
price of today's product in our inflation-riddled economy!
Time and time again I found myself putting down an old Kyk and think-
ing how much I wished others could read what I had just read with such
pleasure and interest. In December 1961, there was, as just one instance, a won-
derful and still completely relevant exchange of views on "Children and Values
in a Changing Society" in which I found a quotation from the Talmud I did
not know but shall now take care to remember: "Limit not thy children to your
own ideas: they are born in a different time." In issue after issue there were
phrases, ideas, insights, and creations which provoked and pleased. Kyk 15 I
found to be a classic in the series poem-sequences by Martin Carter and Wilson
Harris, extract from a novel by Jan Carew, pen portrait of C. L. R. James, a
wonderful article by Edgar Mittleholzer, translations by Miriam Koshland of
four black French poets which were a revelation, and a score more poems
and reviews to add to a magnificent collection. It was so good I had the im-
mediate feeling that all that was needed was to reissue this number and the search
for a "Golden Kyk" would be over.
Having completed the chore, which had turned into a real pleasure, and
become closely acquainted with all 28 issues of the old Kyk, I was sure there
would be quite enough material to produce not one but a number of "Golden
Kyks" of equal interest and merit. But the task remained to compress that much
of value into a single volume of 128 pages. How to set about such a task?
A lot of it must be done through instinctive reaction to individual poems
and articles as you are reading. This provides a still formidably long list
from which a further assay must be made. At this point, and probably earlier,
certain guidelines or principles of selection form in the mind. It may be useful
to identify these as they occurred to AJS and myself not in any particular order
of priority.
One. Quality, of course. The poem or piece must not merely be interest-
ing or historically valuable or culturally exotic. It must be well written, it
must have literary merit.
Two. There must be category-spread. A "Golden Kvk would have to
contain not only poems (perhaps Kyk's greatest strength) but also fiction,
literary and other reviews, and articles with a reasonably wide time and subject
span of cultural developments.
Three. There would have to be some mix of the famous and the for-
gotten. Kyk contributors who are currently celebrated writers like Wilson
Harris, Derek Walcott, Martin Carter, Eddie Brathwaite must surely be
substantially included on merit alone. Yet an honoured place must also be found
for stalwarts of the past who might be in danger of sinking undeservedly into
obscurity.
Four. There should be some indication of Kyk's seminal role not only
in providing an outlet for Caribbean writers, especially poets, but also in helping
to form and further a new cultural consciousness in the region.
Five. To some extent pure sentiment, if you like to call it that, would
have to carry the day. It would be impossible, for instance, not to include some-
thing from Kyk Volume I Number 1. Again, however he might protest, a place
of eminence would always have to be found in a "Go!den Kyk" for the work of
the chief begetter of the whole enterprise, AJS himself.
Readers will have to judge the result of trying to apply these guidelines
as faithfully as possible. It has certainly not been possible to accomplish all
that such principles might imply could ideally be achieved. Many marvellous
pieces have had to be omitted. People who have made great contributions to the
Kyk series have been short-changed and in some cases entirely neglected.
For instance, there is not even one piece by Norman Cameron, one of the stalwart
Kyk contributors on a variety of subjects in the 1940's and 1950's. I personally
am dismayed that not one poem or short story by Jacqueline de Weever, once and
still an excellent contributor, has found its way into this collection. A. N. Forde,
Ivan Van Sertima and J. E. Clare McFarlane are others who are, sadly, missing.
And there really isn't enough from Edgar Mittleholzer, who was a regular con-
tributor in the early days, or from Adolphe Roberts of Jamaica, to name just two.
Certain cultural aspects-art, music, theatre, folk-lore, history-abund-
antly covered in Kyk over the years do not find the sort of place they deserve.
There is nothing here, for instance, from the issue, No. 25, devoted entirely to
theatre. Nor has anything been included from the extraordinary issue No. 10
(April 1950) when single-handedly the editor. A. J. Seymour, undertook a
"summary survey of writing in the West Indies". Any abstract from this issue
would either be too short to do justice to the whole or would have monopolised
too much space if justice were to be done. This was often a dilemma. One
would have loved, for instance, to include Richard Allsopp's series of articles
entitled "The Language We Speak" but they were much too long to fit in and one
was therefore simply left thinking, not for the first or last time, whether or
when we will ever see his completed magnum opus on the subject.
There are many, many other regrets. I had a particular admiration for the
1951 Harold Stannard Memorial lecture by AJS on "The Creation of Quality in
the West Indies", but it is not here. It is worth reissuing as a pamphlet on its
own. I would have loved to include all of Wilson Harris's fourteen poems in
a cycle entitled "The Sun" but only some of it has slipped in. Almost above
all there are the lovely wood-engravings by E. R. Burrowes which appeared in
many Kyks in the early days but which it has not proved possible to reproduce
satisfactorily though they thoroughly deserve to be in this "Golden Kyk".
It proved necessary at the last moment, for want of space, to make some
hard choices. As a result of this final assay M. G. Smith's beautiful poem
"Madonna and Child" and Wilson Harris's powerful sequence "The Fabulous
Well" both had to be omitted. With heavy hearts we also omitted at the last gasp
correspondence exchange between AJS, W. H. L. Allsopp, and Leo Small on the
calypso, a concise and perceptive profile of C. L. R. James by Canon J. D.
Ramkeeson, and a critical appraisal of the paintings of Denis Williams by Wilson
Harris. So much was discovered, so much had to be set aside.
Seemingly glaring omissions are inevitable when material enough for
an article on writing history by Allen Young that badly needed reprinting. So
a couple of full-length books has to be reduced sufficiently to cram into about
120 pages. In the end, of course, what happens is that "instinct", "feel",
again takes over and is the final influence on what goes in. To that large
extent this "Golden Kyk" is very much a personal choice and not a carefully
balanced academic exercise.
Even with the final choices made and the material at the printers one
had bad dreams that some great and obvious treasure from these past issues
might have passed unnoticed through our judgements' careful sieve. We are
reconciled to receiving a number of letters beginning "How could you have
forgotten .................?" To many of these we will have to respond I am sure with
a rueful nod and smile of recognition.
Finally, I must recall again the pure pleasure this work of delving into
past Kyks has given me. The magazine merits its "Golden" issue and it deserves
much more. Some day, when Guyanese or regional institutions can afford it, the
whole series of early Kyks, 1945 to 1961, should be reissued for the benefit of
scholars, for the interest of those who love West Indian literature, and for the
pleasure and information of the ordinary reader.
POETRY
EDWARD KAMAU BRATHWAITE
PIANO
Hunched, hump-backed, gigantic,
The pianist presides above the
Rumpus. His fingers clutch the chords
Dissonance and discord vie and vamp across the key-
Board. His big feet beat the beat until the
Whole joint rocks. It is not romantic.
But a subtle fingering exudes a sweet exotic
Odour, now and then; you'll
Recognize the fragance if you listen well.
This flower blooms and blossoms un-
Til brash boogie-woogie hordes come bourgeoning up from hell
Blind and gigantic.
THE BLUES
She's dark and her voice sings
Of the dark river. Her eyes
Hold the soft fire that only the warm
Night knows. Her skin is musky and soft.
She travels far back, explores
Ruins, touches on old immemorial dreams
Everyone but herself had forgotten. She
Becomes warrior and queen and keeper of the
Tribe. There is no fear
Where she walks, although drums speak
To announce the terrible death of a tyrant
And although her song is sad, there is no sorrow
Where she sings. She walks in a world
Where the river whispers of certainties
That only she can acknowledge. The Trees
Touch confident and unassuming. She hopes
That light will break in the clearing
Before her song ends.
*
SOLO FOR TRUMPET
He grows dizzy
With altitude.
The sun blares.
He hears
Only the brass
Of his own mood.
If he could fly
He would be
An eagle.
He would see
How the land lies
Softly in contours
How the fields lie
Striped, how the
Houses fit into the valleys.
He would see cloud lying
On water; moving like the
Hulls of great ships
Over the land.
But he is only a
Cock.
He sees
Nothing.
Cares
Nothing.
He reaches to the sky
With his eyes closed
His neck bulging.
His ambition
Plummets through the sunlight
Like a shining stone.
INTERLUDE FOR ALTO SAXOPHONE
Propped against the crowded bar
He pours into the curved and silver horn
His old unhappy longing for a home.
The dancers twist and turn
He leans and wishes he could bur
His memories to ashes like some old notorious Emperor of Rome.
But no stars blazed across the sky when he was born
No Wise Men found his hovel. This crowded bar
Where dancers twist and turn holds all the fame
And recognition he will ever earn
On earth or heaven. He leans against the bar
And pours his old unhappy longing in the saxophone.
GEORGE CAMPBELL
HOLY
Holy be the white head of a Negro
Sacred be the black flax of a black child.
Holy be
The golden down
That will stream in the waves of the winds
And will thin like dispersing cloud.
Holy be
Heads of Chinese hair
Sea calm sea impersonal
Deep flowering of the mellow and traditional.
Heads of peoples fair
Bright shimmering from riches of their species;
Heads of Indians
With feeling of distance and space and dusk:
Heads of wheaten gold,
Heads of peoples dark
So strong so original:
All of the earth and the sun!
HISTORY MAKERS
Women stone breakers
Hammers and rocks
Tired child makers
Haphazard frocks.
Strong thigh
Rigid head
Bent nigh
Hard white piles
Of stone
Under hot sky
In the gully bed.
II
No smiles
No sigh
No moan.
III
Women child bearers
Pregnant frocks
Wilful toil sharers
Destiny shapers
History makers
Hammers and rocks.
*
WORKER
Why praise him lightly when he turns to die?
Maybe the night is bright, his fiery court;
Maybe the darkness for a night of mourning
New day: the sun's eternal sport
Watching the earth of life and death and sorrow
Now he is dead. Is there for him tomorrow?
His Earth which claims him for her own
Full knows the lover she has sown.
Measure him? His death is living,
Living for the land which knows no death:
He wears the silken day, the veils of night
His hands that hungered at your heart a time
Are now the trees and paths, his epitaphs.
The stars can tell with their sphinx eyes
He's Earth, her lover, and surmise.
OWEN CAMPBELL
THE WASHERWOMEN
Down where the river beats itself against the stones
And washes them in clouds of frothy spray,
Or foaming, fumbles through them with the thousand tones
Of an orchestra,
The women wash, and humming keep a sort of time;
And families of bubbles frisk and float away
To be destroyed,
To be destroyed,
Like all the baffled hopes that had their little suns,
Tossed on the furious drifts of disappointments.
But all the tide.
Cradles these clinging bubbles ever still, alike
The friendly little hopes that never leave the heart
In this big hall of rushing waters women wash
And with the sound of washing,
With the steady heaving of their slender shoulders
As they rub their stubborn rags upon the boulders,
They keep a sort of time ...
With their thoughts. These were unchanging
Like the persistent music here
Of swirling waters,
The crash of wet clothes beaten on the stones.
The sound of wind in leaves,
Or frog croaks after dusk, and the low moan
Of the big sea fighting the river's mouth. ,
The ever changing patterns in the clouds
Before their dissolution into rain;
Or the gay butterflies manoeuvering
Among the leafy camouflage that clothes the banks
And hides their spent remains when they collapse and die;
Are symbols of their hopes and gaudy plans
Which once they dreamt. But finally they learn to hope
And make plans less elaborate.
It was the same
With those that washed before them here
And passed leaving the soap-stained stones
Where others now half stoop like devotees
To pagan gods.
They have resigned themselves to day long swishing
Of wet cloth chafing the very stone;
And the big symphony of waters rushing
Past clumps of tall stems standing alone,
Apart, like band-leaders, or sentinels,
They must hear the heavy hum
Of wings of insects overgrown,
Cleaving the air like bombers on a plotted course.
They must hear the long 'Hush' of the wind in leaves
As dead ones flutter down like living things
Until the shadows come.
JAN CAREW
MANARABISI
Legend that selling bore was hard as greenheart core
of piles driven into heart of a river:
reapers watched boatmen come and go
till Hanna voices jarred the dust,
and white cranes winged their way complacently
to nests in long savannahs:
green grass pointed legions of sharp blades
like warrior's spears abandoned on pavements
of streets of eternity,
for dark evenings when voices spoke with singing of frogs
and piper owls played throaty melodies
in orchestra of silent trees.
Who parted long night to breach dawn
when tife was a cave of green dungeons,
exploded peripheries of light,
while death sailed dreamlessly on a dark river.
Burning eyes peered from window
to watch green galaxies crowding the world,
Islands of grass rooted in moving tides,
tall cocerite palms leaning to gaze at images
in dark pools of sky and water.
The hungry heart leapt from hard selling of life
rippling mirror still poo!s of death,
bursting like flower of concentric rings
to wash grim hope on shores of time.
Howler baboons rent morning with roaring,
heralds of memesis feeding on berries from Long John trees.
Life was a blood-stain, crimson like cocks-comb flower
red as wild orchids
and legend remains hard as green-heart core
of piles driven into heart of a river.
MARTIN CARTER
Poems of Prison
BARE NIGHT WITHOUT COMFORT
In a bare night without comfort
Stood like an infant hearing a drum;
Shadows and green grass spinning
But clutched at a world without nearing.
Like dark ball rising from nothing
Hurling curse at me and full of scorn:
Bare night without comfort
Stood like an infant hearing a drum,
*
WHO WALKS A PAVEMENT
Iron gate the terrible hands of a clock
A calendar with days scratched off and buried,
Slant roof of slate black as the floor of tight cell
Is not a prison, nor a convict shelter.
A prison is go back, go back, go back,
Lash of two things, shell which is the heart
And heart which is the shell-the hollow tear
The man of time whose look can stain a sky
Who walks a pavement, walks and disappears.
*
THE KIND EAGLE
I make my dance right here!
Right here on the wall of a prison I dance!
This world's hope is a blade of fury
And we. who are sweepers of an ancient sky,
Discoverers of new planet sudden stars
We are the world's hope -
And so therefore, I rise again, I rise again
Freedom is a white road with green grass like love.
Out of my time I carve a monument
Out of a jagged block of convict years I carve it
The sharp knife of dawn glitters in my hand
But how bare is everything tall tall tree
infinite air, the unrelaxing tension of the world
and only hope, hope only, the kind eagle soars and
wheels in flight
I dance on the wall of prison!
It is not easy to be free and bold!
It is not easy to be poised and bound!
It is not easy to endure the spike
So river flood, drown not my pillar feet!
So river flood, collapse to estuary
Only the heart's life, the kind eagle soars and wheels in flight.
ALL OF A MAN
O strike kind eagle, strike!
Grip at this prison and this prison wall!
Scream and accuse the guilty cage of heaven
Hurling me here, hurling me here.
O strike kind eagle, strike
All of a man is heart is hope
All of a man can fly like a bird
0 strike kind eagle, strike.
*
THE DISCOVERY OF COMPANION
This tower of movement bending on the world
is shocked to motion
crumbling knee and face
in the strange sands of discovery
a gasp of fear is the first farewell to death
the first wave of a hand, the first heart beat,
But the return of arrival is merciless
is a pool of dark water, a terrible mirror.
To bend on a planet of misery
is revelation like apocalypse.
No longer the trunk of a palm, the trunk of a tree
but pillar of endurance.
Yes, to be born again, astonished and made bare
is awareness of companion.
While the blue swords of lightning kill
knowledge is intense and scorching fire.
And only when a man is clad in flame
can he be made to know companion.
II
This is his first companion valuable fear
a beacon on the sea, a lane of light,
This matron of the trembling loin of man
becomes companion at the precipice,
His human hands are brittle and will crack
like the wall of his heart.
In the ladder from the cave the rungs of time
bend like the working roots that eat the soil.
But fear of losing all is strong like life
losing but not lost.
Fear of inhuman movement is the curse
or the blessing, guide of traveller.
While time is measured in the stretch of years
night can be measureless.
The veinless womb of darkness breeds a bird,
the flying child of fear or curse or blessing
to soar in the blue gables of the world's imprisonment.
And this too is companion
mother of life and motion,
The stranded cables loosen bit by bit
and sink in the flood of a river.
The brittle heart expands a moistened flower.
And the kind eagle soars again
but in the tension of his wing and shadow
moves a man.
Now this ;s the completion of discovery
the life of the world.
So man is wrapped or clad in gowns of fire
each human clutches at companion
in an original sequence, no desire of death.
IV
The arrival in the camp of broken glass
is full of wounding points.
And the streets of life are set about with knives
to cut the travelling eef.
Merciless and bare the moving world revolves
like a circling star.
Only men of fire will survive
all else will move to ashes and to air.
DEATH OF A SLAVE
Above green cane arrow
is blue sky-
beneath green arrow
is brown earth -
dark is the shroud of slavery
over the river
over the forest
over the field.
Ale! black is skin
Aie! red is heart
as round it looks
over the world
over the Forest
over the sun.
in the dark earth
in cold dark earth
time plants the seeds of anger
this is another world
but above is same blue sky
same sun-
below is same deep heart of agony.
cane field is green dark green
green with life of its own
heart of slave is red deep red
red with life of its own.
day passes like long whip
over the back of slave
day is burning whip
biting the neck of slave.
but sun falls down like old man
beyond the dim line of the River
and white birds
come flying, flying flapping at the wind
white birds like dreams come settling down
night comes from down river
like thief -
night comes from deep forest
in a boat of silence-
dark is the shroud
the shroud of night
over the river
over the Forest
over the Field.
slave staggers and falls
face is on earth
drum is silent
silent like night
hollow like boat
between the tides of sorrow.
in the dark floor
in the cold dark earth
time plants the seeds of anger.
*
THREE POEMS OF SHAPE AND MOTION
A SEQUENCE
Number One
I was wondering if I could shape this passion
just as I wanted in solid fire,
I was wondering if the strange combustion of my days
the tension of the world inside of me
and the strength of my heart were enough.
I was wondering if I could stand as tall
while the tide of the sea rose and fell
If the sky would recede as I went
or the earth would emerge as I came
to the door of morning locked against the sun.
I was wondering if I could make myself
nothing but fire, pure and incorruptible.
If the wound of the wind on my face
would be healed by the work of my life
Or the growth of the pain in my sleep
would be stopped in the strife of my days.
I was wondering if the agony of years
could be traced to the seed of an hour.
If the roots that spread out in the swamp
ran too deep for the issuing flower.
I was wondering if I could find myself
all that I am in all I could be.
If all the population of stars
would be less than the things I could utter
And the challenge of space in my soul
be filled by the shape I become.
Number Two
Pull off yuh shirt and throw 'way yuh hat
Kick off yuh shoe and stamp down the spot
Tear off yuh dress and open yuhself
And dance like you mad
Far far.
Oh left foot, right foot, left Ah boy!
Right foot, left foot, right Ah boy!
Run down the road
Run up the sky
But run like you mad
Far far.
Jump off the ground
Pull down a star
Burn till you bleed
Far far.
Oh right foot, left foot, right Ah boy!
Left foot, right foot, left Ah boy!
Oh right foot, right foot
Left foot, left foot
Dance like you mad
Far far.
Number 1Trm
I walk slowly in the wind
watching myself in things I did not make
in jumping shadows and in limping cripples
dust on the earth and houses tight with sickness
deep constant pain, the dream without the sleep
I walk slowly in the wind
hearing myself in the loneliness of a child
in woman's grief which is not understood
in coughing dogs when midnight lingers long
on stones, on streets and then on echoing stars,
that burn all night and suddenly go out.
I walk slowly in the wind
knowing myself in every moving thing
in years and days and words that mean so much
strong hands that shake, long roads that walk and deeds that do themselves
and all this world and all these lives to live.
I walk slowly in the wind
remembering scorn and naked men in darkness
and huts of iron rivetted to earth,
Cold huts of iron stand upon this earth
like rusting prisons.
Each wall is marked and each wide roof is spread
like some dark wing
casting a shadow or a living curse.
I walk slowly in the wind
to lifted sunset red and gold and dim
a long brown river slanting to an ocean
a fishing boat, a man who cannot drown.
I walk slowly in the wind
remembering me amid the surging river
amid the drought and all the merciless flood
and all the growth and all the life of man.
I walk slowly in the wind
and birds are swift, the sky is blue like silk.
From the big sweeping ocean of water
an iron ship rusted and brown anchors itself.
And the long river runs like a snake
silent and smooth.
I walk slowly in the wind
I hear my footsteps echoing down the tide
echoing like a wave on the sand or a wing on the wind
echoing echoing
a voice in the soul, a laugh in the funny silence.
(Ov)
I walk slowly in the wind
I walk because I cannot crawl or fly.
UNIVERSITY OF HUNGER
is the university of hunger the wide waste
is the pilgrimage of man the long march.
The print of hunger wanders in the land
the green tree bends above the long forgotten
the plains of life rise up and fall in spasms
the huts of men are fused in misery.
They come treading in the hoofmarks of the mule
passing the ancient bridge
the grave of pride
the sudden flight
the terror and the time.
They come from the distant village of the flood
passing from middle air to middle earth
in the common hours of nakedness.
Twin bars of hunger mark their metal brows
twin seasons mock them
parching drought and flood.
is the dark ones
the half sunken in the land
is they who had no voice in the emptiness
in the unbelievable
in the shadowless.
They come treading on the mud floor of the year
mingling with dark heavy waters
and the sea sound of the eyeless flitting bat,
O long is the march of men and long is the life
and wide is the span.
is air dust and the long distance of memory
is the hour of rain when sleepless toads are silent
is broken chimneys smokeless in the wind
is brown trash huts and jagged mounds of iron.
They come in long lines
toward the broad city.
Is the golden moon like a big coin in the sky
is the flood of bone beneath the floor of flesh
is the beak of sickness breaking on the stone.
O long is the march of men and long is the life
and wide is the span.
O cold is the cruel wind blowing
O cold is the hoe in the ground.
They come like sea birds
flapping in the wake of a boat
is the torture of sunset in purple bandages
is the powder of fire spread like dust in the twilight
is the water melodies of white foam on wrinkled sand.
The long streets of night move up and down
baring the thighs of a woman
and the cavern of generation
The beating drum returns and dies away
the bearded men fall down and go to sleep
the cocks of dawn stand up and crow like bugles.
is they who rose early in the morning
watching the moon die in the dawn
is they who heard the shell blow and the iron clang
is they who had no voice in the emptiness
in the unbelievable
in the shadowless
O long is the march of men and long is the life
and wide is the span.
FRANK A. COLLYMORE
HYMN TO THE SEA
Like all who live on small islands
I must always be remembering the sea.
Being always cognizant of her presence; viewing
Her through apertures in the foliage; hearing,
When the wind is from the south, her music, and smelling
The warm rankness of her; tasting
And feeling her kisses on bright sunbathed days:
I must always be remembering the sea.
Always, always the encircling sea,
Eternal: lazylapping, crisscrossed with stillness,
Or windruffed, aglitter with gold; and the surf
Waist-high for children, or horses for Titans;
Her lullaby, her singing, her moaning; on sand,
On shingle, on breakwater, and on rock;
By sunlight, starlight, moonlight, darkness:
I must always be remembering the sea.
Go down to the sea upon this random day
By metalled road, by sandway, by rockpath,
And come to her. Upon the polished jetsam,
Shell and stone and weed and saltfruit
Tor from the underwater continents, cast
Your garments and despondencies; re-enter
Her embracing womb: a return, a completion.
I must always be remembering the sea.
Life came from the sea, and once a goddess arose
Fullgrown from the saltdeep; love
Flows from the sea, a flood; and the food
Of islanders is reaped from the sea's harvest.
And not only life and sustenance; visions, too,
Are born of the sea: the patterning of her rhythm
Finds echoes within the musing mind.
I must always be remembering the sea.
Symbol of fruitfulness, symbol of barrenness,
Mother and destroyer, the calm and the storm!
Life and desire and dreams and death
Are born of the sea; this swarming land
Her creation, her signature set upon the salt ooze
To blossom into life; and the red hibiscus
And the red roots burn more brightly against her blue,
I must always be remembering the sea.
OSWALD DURAND
CHOUCOUNE
HAITI'S MOST CELEBRATED FOLK POEM
(Translation by W. Adolphe Roberts)
Behind the big patch of pinguins there
The other day Choucoune I met.
She smiled on me when she saw me stare.
I cried: "Good Lord, what a pretty pet!" (Repeat)
She said: "You really think so, my love,"
And the little birds heard us from above. (Repeat)
When I think of that, my grieving pains.
Since then, my two feet are in chains. (Repeat)
Choucoune is a sambo; she has eyes
That shine like candles lit for you.
Her breasts are firm, and straight they rise,
Ah, if Choucoune had but been true! -
We stayed there and we chatted long,
And the birds in the woods were glad, with song.
Better forget, for the grieving pains.
Since then, my two feet are in chains. (Repeat)
Choucoune's little teeth are white as milk.
Her mouth star-apple colours took.
Not large, she is plump and smooth as silk.
Such women please me at a look.
But yesterday is not today!
The birds heard what she had to say!
Perhaps they know how grieving pains,
Since then, my two feet are in chains!
I went with her to her mama's hut;
As good an old one as there could be!
Who while we drank chocolate and coconut
Said plainly: "This young man pleases me!"
O little birds in the woods that fly,
Is it really all finished and gone by?
Better forget, for the grieving pains.
Since then, my two feet are in chains (Repeat)
The furniture was ready: a fine, deep bed,
Two mattresses, a wardrobe beyond corn' -
Round table with napkins and cloth to spread,
Curtains and cane-chairs and a rocking chair.
Just fifteen days I had to wait ...
Little birds, little birds, hear my fate! .. .
You will understand that my grieving pains.
Since then, my two feet are in chains!
A little white fellow came down there,
With a little red beard and rosy face,
A watch in his pocket, pleasing hair.
He was the cause of my disgrace!
He found Choucoune a pretty dove,
He spoke French to her She fell in love.
Better forget, too much it pains.
Choucoune left me with my feet in chains!
A wonder, the saddest in all this song,
The thing folk cannot forget so soon
Is that in spite of my cruel wrong,
I love and shall always love Choucoune.
She is going to make a little quadroon!
Look, birds! Her belly is now a full moon!
Be still! Close your beaks! The grieving pains.
The two feet of Pierre his two feet are in chains!
(Slowly)
Translator's Note
The rendering of Choucoune should be in the form of a chant, with in-
cidental musical accompaniment on a banjo or an accordion. Often the reciter
improvises a mere thread of a tune.
WILSON HARRIS
AGAMEMNON
Lightning-flash
the beacon of homecoming: the dark night is illuminated,
in a split second. Thunder rolls
like a breaker of magnitude
in space, the trees stand
caught in the tensions of instantaneous tumult: the crowded
world knows the violent confines of storm to be over
or not yet begun.
So full of stark memory,
it is blinded by the lightning storm of time: like a king, majesty
of action stumbles over a trivial pebble,
the road of homecoming
is dark as night, doom lit up like daylight,
all armour ineffectual.
The swift lightning of reason and unreason
shed uneasiness over the truce of god, the implacable warrior,
whose station is life or death. Each flash lengthens to brief sunset,
or shortens to noon, individual and separate,
leaving the recollection and murmur of violence. The trees are not
more captive in the photography of storm
than each ominous warrior, whose brightness looks substanceless.
One remains in the darkness alive
to count the gain or loss, the vestige of victory or defeat,
from a blinding revelation of peril in the lightning-flash.
What station
is the glory of that noble king?
must he always stand at the well of time
flashing still the stream or murmur of violence as an omen of war fulfilled?
his strength no more than his peers who are substanceless with the shadows
of the dead: his features featureless and enduring
like the storm warning:
Or must he go to his journey's end
to the other timeless well, must he go?
where home is both time and timeless, height and depth, always home.
Home is a mysterious whisper, the strong winds voice faith or conspiracy:
the conspiracy of faith or of love, of lovers: yet the storm out of love's
heart has its own faint secret and no breath of warning may blow.
Silent lies the way home, the road of the spirit, the aftermath
of victory. When war is over, the silent flashing beacon faces
home and eternity like a dream recaptured
a dream of conflict ended, a dream of tranquility.
The memory of homeland, the eternal sky, the green
leaf and the cordial of life, the certainty
of days that pass under easy clouds
without long shadows to divide stream from substance!
Each living definition of beauty
smothered in the murky heart of space when it overpowers
and drenches the constancy of earth: but the stream darkens
only to flash again. Home is the clarity of the soul
in the certainty of destruction.
The purpose or the destiny of a king-to endure lightning of fate -
must render august and memorable
the home of man wherever it be, the startling recovery of time
through the murky feud that deforms constancy.
So life darkens under branches of home
into murder and death
covering friend and foe alike.
But the truce of god still endures
when lightning flash and point to the wounds of the world
in one instant of perception for all:
this fateful flash the promise or well of a king.
*
THE DEATH OF HECTOR, TAMER OF HORSES
Over the mountains and over the sea
runs a black horse, his hoof
Pounds the mountains and unsettles the sea.
His hoof grounds the mountains
Like the bones of the sea.
Like Death runs so swiftly, his black limbs remember
my very vain breath and my boast in the stars.
I mount him and I hold him
with the sun for a saddle and a bit made of stars.
I mount him and I hold him
with my breath on the bridle and my boast in the stars.
I mount and I hold him
with my breath turning silver like a bridle of stars.
Far up on the mountains and deep down in the sea
I ride my black horse up and down and far.
My breath now deserts me,
I spit saliva and stars, I stop breathing the gore and mud
I grow breathless, ride faster and ride far. My ultimate horse of
darkness leaves earth's doors ajar.
I am kneaded into a star.
I am kneaded in a cave of darkness
where Death's hoof ploughed a scar.
I am kneaded on the mountains near heaven
where Death's hoof cut a scar
like a grave for a man and a mortal
the mud and spit of stars. The mud and spit of stars are
in the mixing
and in the kneading
Of every mortal being
Who rides the black horse far.
*
THE STONE OF THE SEA
(Ulysses to Calypso)
Muffling time and muffled by time
ironed out to surrender the light or like a star
is the deep bed of the sea like sunshine
crushed to yield blood in darkness. This night of ocean
is its own star of memory, waving gently
the vast water reflects an eerie life and solitude
majestic, strange. an experience of hollowness and yet
of solid mass like substance. The minstrel balance of fins
is feet of dancers, whose poise or quality
is the web of destiny, the organ of reunion
and separation. Every inclination to crawl or creep
upon immensity is nameless. Yet it is sometimes called Birth,
it is sometimes called Death. It is like a stone that melts
into flesh, it is like a colour mysterious in half-light,
equally solid as melting, internally shaded, externally bright.
It appears black, it appears white, merman or mermaid, deeper
than primitive desire in life, it has no footing, it has no ledge,
but in appearance like doom
in a cold spray it sometimes rests or is blown over the range of the
immortal deep.
Immortality is part of its nature, the stone of fire
which is resting and yet never rests like the sea.
The whirling chasms of sensation are fixed
like pyramids of immobility, a mindless fixity
in every instant of time. Only the immortal fluid
of stone as star
can turn a succession of waves into light (This is the prayer
of earthly love
to move the stone of the sea
for Glory and its invaluable human spouse, a mortal
being, like Penelope)
3
32
CHARCOAL
(epilogue to the senses: the heart)
Bold outlines are drawn to encompass
the history of the world: crude but naked emphasis
rests on each figure of the past
wherein the golden sunlight burns raw and unsophisticated,
Fires of brightness are sheltered
to burn the fallen limbs of men: the green
spirit of leaves like smoke
rises to mark the barrow of earth
and dwindles to perfection. The stars
are sparks
in space and time, the fury of fire
that blackens the limbs of each god who falls:
spendthrift creation. The stable dew-drop is flame.
The sun burnishes each star in preparation for every deserted lane.
Time lies uneasy between the paintless houses
weather-beaten and dark.
The Negro once leaned on his spade
breathing the smoke of his labour,
the arch of his body banked to shelter or tame
his slow burning heart
like a glittering diamond:
or else like charcoal to grain
the world, lines of a passionate intention.
TROY
The working muses nourish Hector
hero of time: like small roots that move,
greener leaves to fathom the earth.
This is the controversial tree of time
beneath whose warring branches
the sparks of history fall. So eternity to season, it is converted into
an exotic roof for love, the barbaric conflict of man.
So he must die first to be free.
Solid or uprooted in pain, his bright limbs
must yield their glorious intentions to the secret
root of the heart. And musing waters dart
like arrow of memory over him, a visionary: smarting tears
of the salty earth.
The everchanging branches of the world, the green
loves and the beautiful dark veins in time
must fall to lightning and be calm in broken compassion:
33
but the wind moves outermost and hopeful
auguries: the strange opposition of a flower on a branch to its dark
wooden companion. On the gravel and the dry earth
each dry leaf is powder under the wheels
of war. But each brown root has protection
from the spike of flame. Each branch
tunnels to meet a well or inscrutable
history
shows the mortality of man
broken into scales that heal the strife of god.
The petals of space return
in a gnarled persistence like time.
To claim eternity as its own
time is this tree of the past
still grows from a mortal bosom.
So now when Hector dies, the creation of a hero
kills a father, a husband and all. What frail succession continues I
Why must he fall
when still a green branch
why shoulder a war with the sulky sky of god
To be truly mortal-
must Hector
to the immortals climb?
or to be truly fateful
to Hades lean before time
and be dusty and forgetful?
What glory has the almighty promised him?
only this-
capricious lightning of victory
while Achilles rests beside the ancient sea
while death waits in the guise of immortality.
Far off the clouds are tinged with pink and purple
the fire and darkness, the passion and the gloom of storm
the unearthly sense of valour subdued: but the caves of death
wait for the mortal
who turns in brightness to the immortal
blandishments of fame or fire!
the wild contest and the atrocious end
must dapple the world with flame and extinction
like still shadows moving in the memories of god.
Save for this tree that continues out of the breast of love,
shelter for what is beleaguered, the struggle that lives and shines!
So Hector knows the trunk of man, the branches of heroes and gods
foreshadowing the labour of all.
Loses his spear and groans to leave his love:
so is he pursued by a contradiction, The fine blades of grass
point their green arrows to his heart: the sun marches
to meet his young night.
his red flowers burning like inexorable stars: his roots serve
to change illusion and forsake
blossoming coals of immortal imperfection.
ROY HEATH
THE PEASANTS
The people plough the land
but do not own it.
Their children see the land
but do not inherit it,
Labour beneath the ruthless sun broiling and burning
through the skin bears no fruit
but yet it is better to die on rich brown soil than in
the street.
These noble peasants who know the pure and simple life
suffer from this rare knowledge,
and forever kissing the hem of destitution
they live with green fields of rice and pasture
sown with the rich dung of contented beasts.
Like a tree so arched by the wind that its crown would kiss
the grass
so seem the figures of reapers that gently rob the silent
earth
Fortitude in a shattered shirt
when the sun retires and dusk draws her blanket over
the land
They skirt the dams, these pillars of dignity
to homes of peace and hope
and after the rains a breath of wing brings a pungent
scent of steaming earth
and trees give up their fruit
and the harvest is garnered.
CECIL HERBERT
SONG
Night's end and bird song. Bright birds,
All through the morn from the child's waking hour,
From perches high in, with cascades of chords,
Drenched the leafy dew-starred hair of trees,
When the gradual, vivid dawn was done
The filigree of dew drops disappeared,
Bird song of the past was blurred
And fumbling the hairless trees
Came time's haze of dust-laden years
Which makes future and past so vague;
And also came the fear that stunned
The fear that I'd grown into stone.
But to-day, bright thoughts have scoured the brain
And I try for the happy words
To express my hope, large as the sun,
That violent as the poui
Which explodes into flowers when earth is cast iron
I shall rend my veil of fears
And burst into song with the radiant tongue
Of the birds, in the trees, in the dawn.
AND THE POUIS SING
In far days in happy shires
In the perfumes that all day creep
From virgin moulds, in the fires
Of a sullen but tolerant sun, deep,
Our roots drilled deep and found
In caverns underground
Sweet water
Rich as the laughter
That slept in Carib eyes before fierce slaughter.
Through the soft air failing,
Swifter than the sleek hawk dives
On the dove, on silent wing
Pilfered their caciques lives
At our feet in our shade
Where once they had played
In childhood
Children of the sun
Who prayed to the sun to avenge their blood,
Hostile grew the sun and pitiless
Spear sword arrow of light grew fiery
And in the blindness of their bitterness
Bored bird and beast and tree:
Under the whip of savage winds
And intricate with wounds
Necrotic flesh
Fell fold by fold from flanks
That never before had known the driver's lash.
Old. we are old before our prime
(Springs of laughter ran dry
And hearts atrophied) and in our time
Have heard lips lift their cry
To the stone-deaf skies, have seen
How the hawk has been
Stripped of pride
In necessary propitiation;
In vale on hill where slave and cacique died.
Have seen from the blood arise
The cactus, live columbarium
Of the winged tears of indignant eyes,
And from its flowers come
Dim odours, sweetening the air
Through the desolate years
And bringing barren hearts
Auguries of new days, new faith, bright singing.
E. McG. KEANE
TO ....
Shyly a little
because your innocence is still
innocent of itself,
and you have not
learned your modesty by heart,
my thoughts embraces
of your soul
end every searching their sadness:
but since
sighs are not fulfilled
in their own due longing,
and hope remains mercy
only until the warm
love of its deception
waltzes over the edge of
our one lost moment,
my searching is forever
and so be your innocence,
MY LOVE ARE YOU STRONG
My love, are you strong?
I will bring my life to you like a bundle of washing,
And all they say is my soul
I will bring
Like washing to your sweet rivers.
And will you say this?
Drink deeply
Sink deeply
Dream deeply of cleansing
In the rivers' bones ...
My love, are you strong?
I will bring my sins to you
On the breast of your rivers, like stones
I will bring my sins
Prayerful to be swept along and away,
And will you say this?
Will you say,
Sigh sweetly
Die gently
Dream deeply of cleansing
In the rivers' bones
Translations by
MIRIAM KOSHLAND
ETIENNE LERO (Martinique)
HE LEFT TODAY
He left today when the grieving forest poured out its flowers in
waves
in a great rhythm of injured things ..
He left
And since
his memory floats, liquid and capricious on the golden steamer
that the jealous soul of old deers
forgets in the forest of their dreaming youth.
A shepherd
whistled a song that was never heard again
And the lost bell
of goats in the mountains
was mournful
like the prayer of the wind on the slope ...
*
JEAN JOSEPH (Madagascar)
POEM
Here is
she whose eyes are prisms of sleep
and whose lids are heavy with dreams,
whose feet are buried in the sea
and whose slimy hands stick out of it
filled with corals and blocks of glistering salt.
She will put them in little heaps near a bay of mist
and sell them to naked sailors
whose tongues were cut out -
until the rain begins to fall.
Then she will no longer be visible
and one will only see
her hair flying in the wind,
like a clump of unwinding algae,
and perhaps some grains insipid salt.
GEORGES DESPORTES (Martinique)
WE HAVE ABANDONED
We have abandoned the rabble, the unfrocked
We have stripped us of our European clothes
Magnificent and barbarous brutes we are;
And we have danced altogether nude
Altogether nude around the high flames
Altogether nude under the red sun of America,
Altogether nude under the bamboos and the palmettos
of the islands
Altogether nude like savages, altogether nude like Negroes.
And we shout our joy of being free
We sing our deliverance and our liberation
Under the luminous sun of the tropical Caribbean;
And the tom-tom re-echoes our joy ...
On our bright faces, generous and relaxed,
The black joy mocks with great flashes of white teeth!
Macerated in the alcohol of our African joy
we rime a new music
To the blows of muffled rolling in drum's cadence
To the dry beaten blows, vibration of drumsticks
And we hurl against the world our primitive challenge
Our prognathious challenge!
Altogether nude under the red sun of America
Altogether nude around the great wood-pile of joy
Altogether nude under the palms, nude under the bamboos
We shout under the sky of the Tropics;
To the sound of powerful jazz from the Caribbean islands
The pride of being black
The glory of being Negroes.
LEOPOLD SEDAR-SENGHOR (Senegal)
AND WE SHALL BATHE
And we shall bathe, my friend, in an African presence
Of
Furnishings from Guinea and the Congo ponderous and polished
sombre and serene
Masks primitive and pure on distant walls yet so near!
Tabourets of honour for the hereditary hosts from the princes of
the High-country.
Of wild and haughty perfumes, thick tresses of silence,
Cushions of shadow and of leisure, the noise of a quiet well,
Classical words and in the distance the alternating chants like the
loincloths of Sudan.
And then friendly light, your blue blindness will soften the
obsession of this presence-
Black white and red, oh, red like the soil of Africa.
THE HURRICANE
The hurricane uproots everything around me
And the hurricane tears out within me leaves and
futile words.
Whirlwinds of passion blow in silence
But peace on the dry tornado, on the flight of winter!
You, ardent wind, pure wind, wind of beautiful season,
burn each flower, each empty thought
When the sand falls again upon the dunes of the heart.
Servant-girl, suspend your statuesque gesture, and you
children, your games and your ivory laughter,
You, that it consumes your voice and your body,
drying the perfume of your flesh
The flame that lightens my night like a column, like a palm.
Embrace my lips of blood, Spirit, breathe on the
strings on my kora*
That my song will rise, as pure as the gold from Galam.
(*Kora a kind of harp. It has 16-32 strings.)
*
AIME CESAIRE (Martinique)
SUN SERPENT
Sun serpent's eye fascinating my eye
and the ocean filthy from islands snapping with the fingers of roses
flaming spear and my body unharmed by lightning
water mounts the dead bodies of light lost in the pompless halls
whirlwinds of icicles crown the heart reeking of crows
our hearts
this is the voice of tamed lightning turning upon their
hinges of cracks
transmission of anolis in the landscapes of cut glass
these are the vampire flowers climbing to the relief of orchids
elixir of the central fire
righteous fire of the mango tree in a night covered with bees
my desire a hazard of tigers surprised at the brimstones
and alarm golden the childish strata
and my pebble body eating fish eating
leaves and sleep
the sweetness of the word Brazil at the bottom of the swamp.
*
THE WHEEL
The wheel is the most beautiful invention of men and his only one
there is the sun which turns
there is the earth which turns
there is your face which turns on the axle of your neck when you cry
but your minutes will not coil the licked up blood around the spool of life
the art to suffer is as sensitive as the stump of a tree under the knife
of the winter
the hind weary from not drinking
puts for me unexpectedly upon the well's edge
your face of a dismastered schooner
your face
like a village asleep at the bottom of a lake
to be reborn on the day of grass and the year
of fruit.
GEORGE W. LAMMING
SWANS
By no other name are these
The imperturbable birds more beautiful,
No likelier image for the summer's curl
Of white light caught from the sea's
Arterial cells; or the moon's wry
Face carved on the curved aristocratic sky.
Sailing the solitude of their customary waters
Dark and dimpled in the windy morning,
Instinct prompts a ritual of preening
The rude arrangement of their feathers,
And leaping with the leaping light of dawn
They crown the river with a white perfection.
Later the circus arrives
With its ready-made apparatus of pleasures,
Dogs and women and the dutiful masters
Of small boats swimming their lives
Through charted areas of water
And chuckled warnings of the wind's laughter.
The birds thoughtful, decorous, austere,
Retreat to a far side of the river,
Their eyes held in a puzzled stare
Measure their recently arrived spectator.
Some cluster to a deep deliberation
Or ponder in amazement their own reflection.
Leisurely the evening ambles,
Through the stained air, on torn leaves,
Over the lame, dry grasses.
Sadly, silently the late light falls,
And the waving curl of water dies
Where the winged white quietude at anchor lies.
Now blank desertion fills the senses,
Over the howling city
Louder than the cry of industry,
The moon sheds a contagion of madness,
And water fills the eyes of the visitor
Entering the legend of this historic river.
BIRTHDAY POEM FOR CLIFFORD SEALY
Today I would remember you whom birth brought no lucky dip
From which to pluck a permanent privilege,
And pain pushed prematurely into prose.
The photograph that recreates a child whose glance
Cast on the rescuing rock reads tyranny
His body bare to the bellowing wind
Has proved your former existence,
So when the season of awareness came
Passion made politics a serious game
And poverty your partner. How well I understood
The intolerant gesture, the juvenile lust to murder
An evil that had forged your life.
My birth records a similar story:
The freezing bastardy, the huddled tenantry,
Where children carry parents' pains like a uniform
Articulate only in their loyalty to life
The individual desire or despair mocking most faithfully
Barometers that measure another's will
And happiness as time indeed has shown
Absolved by the evil, intelligent question:
Was that piece of land a paying concern?
Those who start life without a beginning
Must always recall their crumbling foundations,
Rushing past affliction of the womb's unfortunate opening,
Reconsider now and again their earliest ambitions,
Or poised somewhere between loss and a possible arrival
Question their precarious present portion
What new fevers arise to reverse the crawl
Our islands made towards their spiritual extinction?
Do you still patrol the city's unsavoury sites
Probing the prostitutes' hearts? Setting your intelligence
An exercise in pity as the warm nights
Drift their human flotsam before your questioning glance?
Nothing is changed in the news that reaches me here:
Papers continue to print the impossible, and rumours telegraph
Whatever falls within the senses' gauge,
Young poets are decorated with foreign approval
For precocious statements in a borrowed language,
Fashionable women whom comfort couldn't bless with sense
Still flock to applaud lectures by men
Who've a soft spot for the sound of their voices,
Corruption is keen: time throbs
With the ache of the proud and the sensitive like you
Who angrily wade through the vacuum
Forever afloat with oily seas,
While politicians posing incredible paunches
Parading their magical and primitive power
Fit the incompetent into jobs.
Life is similar in (what some call) the Mother Country
Where our people wear professions like a hat
That cannot prove what the head contains,
Success knows what grimace to assume,
Mediocrity is informed by a bright sense of bluff,
And Democracy a convenient attitude for many,
Students whom the huge city has shorn of glamour
Divorced from their status by a defect of colour
Find consolation in Saturday nights
With eloquent white whores that dance;
Or at nightfall over their new habit of tea
Argue with an elephant's lack of intelligence
Our culture must be spelt with a West Indian C.
We must suffer in patience whom life received
On islands cramped with disease no economy can cure,
Go with or without our lovers to the quiet shore
Where the reticent water weaves its pattern
And crabs crawl with a peculiar contemplation of the land,
Move through the multitude's monotonous cry
For freedom and politics at the price of blood,
Yet live every moment in the soul's devouring flame,
Until we fold with the folding earth.
Erect our final farewell in tree or cloud,
Hoping (if possible) for a people's new birth.
So you who care little for festival,
The seasonal sports, the carnival
Of barren souls in the February noon,
Preferring to inhabit your room, hoping to lean
On some durable solace in pages that justify
Your honest but innocent worship of the Russian regime
May not question why your exiled friend,
Seldom at ease in the habits of his time,
Never understanding why people pretend
To manufacture good wishes at certain times of the year,
Should yet try sincerely to offer you
A gift in words on your birthday.
EGBERT MARTIN (LEO)
THE SWALLOW
Who would not follow thee, swallow, in flight
On clean, swift wings thro' the opal light,
Away in purple of setting sun,
With a mad, wild joy till the day is done?
Who would not sweep, like a flash, thro' and thro'
The deep, vast void of the liquid blue,
With never a care but to cut the air,
With never a heed but delirious speed,
And a life-a full life that is life indeed?
Who would not soar ever more and more,
Till the great earth seems but a spectre shore?
Who would not be in a sphere like thee,
Of glorious ether, for ever free?
Who would not mount with a swifter speed
Than the eye can follow or thought can heed;
With never a pause save to gently float,
On the sea of air like a drifting boat,
With a soft, full breast and a curving throat?
Past river and lake past the hills of white,
Past the houses' tops at a dizzy height,
Past the silent lake thro' whose crystal breast
Thy faint shadow flits like a spiritual guest,
Past the low long lines of the great flat plains
Where eternal silence for ever reigns,
So swiftly you fly now low and now high,
In chase with the clouds that lazily fly,
A voyager voyaging joyously.
Who would not follow thee, swallow, in flight,
In the cool, sweet air of the early night?
When each star hung high with its cheerful eye,
Drops golden treasure right gloriously,
And the moon high hung, like a censer swung,
Floods a rare light ever fresh and young.
Oh, who would not follow thee, beautiful swallow,
From life and its trials so trying and hollow?
Who would not rise, with a happy surprise
Away and away into happier skies?
THEMES OF SONG
Splendour of morning, splendour of even, splendour of night,
Splendour of sun and stars, and splendour of all things bright,
Splendour in deepest deep, and splendour in highest height,
These are the themes of song.
Beauty of ocean, beauty of river, beauty of lake,
Beauty that comes in dreams, and the living hues that wake,
Beauty that gleams and glows for the very beautiful's sake;
These are the themes of song.
Music that floods the soul in waves of delicious sound
Music that gushes fresh, spontaneously around,
Music in every voice and murmur of nature found,
These are the themes of song.
TWILIGHT
The twilight shuddered into gloom
The trees stood trembling in the air
And flung their green umbrageous arms
Above their wildly floating hair.
While saddened misereres fell
Like organ-peals in full excess
From breezes equal fall and swell
In agonies of bitterness.
The morning aged to older day
And burst in shreds of vivid light,
Bestrewing on the lying way
Its carnival of heat and light.
The wind a wondrous "Gloria" rolled
Deep through the cloudy arch of space,
Chord after chord, whose notes of gold
Were smothered in the rhyme of grace.
WALTER MAC A. LAWRENCE
KAIETEUR
And falling in splendour sheer down from the height
that should gladden the heart of an eagle to scan,
That lend to the towering forest beside thee the semblance
of shrubs trimmed and tended by man, -
That viewed from the brink where the vast amber volume
that once was a stream cataracts into thee,
Impart to the foothills surrounding the maelstrom beneath
thee that rage as the troublous sea,
The aspect of boulders that border a pool in the scheme of
a rare ornamentalist's plan,
Where, where is the man that before thee is thrilled not-
that scorneth the impulse to humble the knee,
With the scene of thy majesty resting upon him, and
conscious of flouting some terrible ban?
Who, who can behold thee, O glorious Kaieteur, let down
as it were from the fathomless blue,
A shimmering veil on the face of the mountain obscuring
its flaws from inquisitive view,
Retouched with the soft, rosy glow of the morning and
breaking the flow of desultory light,
Or bathed in the brilliant translucence of noontide a
mystical mirror resplendently bright.
Or else in the warm sanguine glory of sunset, a curtain of
gold with the crimsoning hue
Of the twilight upon it or drenched in the silvery flood of
the moonlight subliming the night,
And feel not the slumbering spirit awaking to joy in the
infinite greatly anew?
ROGER MAIS
I, SHALL WAIT FOR THE MOON TO RISE
I shall sit here and wait for the moon to rise,
And when she shall look at me,
From over the mountain-tops of tall bleak buildings
And come smiling down the valleys of the streets,
I shall ask her here to sit with me
In a Chinese tea garden under a divi-divi tree.
And a maiden golden like moon shall come
Wearing a clean white apron ...
And I shall show her a bright new sixpence
And bid her shut her eyes
And paint with the pigments of all her dreams
The broad brave canvas of the skies.
And she will think: 'He is a little mad-
Decidedly he is a little mad '
I shall sit here and wait for the moon to rise.
WORDSWORTH McANDREW
TO A CARRION CROW
They call you Carrion Crow
scorn to eat your flesh
spit when they see you administering the last rites
call you Cathartes: the Clean-up,
yet if they only knew the
secret of your strange religion.
Once you were the silver bird of the heavens
once you flew as high and as free
as only a bird can. The sky was yours
for you were king of the air
but here
was the secret of your discontent:
it was not enough to just live and die,
not-knowing. You kept asking, whence came I,
whither go I, and why? The sky
must hold the answer, you thought,
and sought long and desperately
to glimpse what lay beyond it.
Relentlessly you fought
pitted bone and feather and tendon
against the blue barrier that mocked you, locked you off
from the secret world behind its curvature.
But you were more determined than it knew
and could fly higher.
So you perspired at your quest
until one inspired day you flew
so hard and so fast against the blue
closing your wings at the last
minute for penetration
that at last you had a look at the other side.
Nobody knows what you saw
when you passed through
but you burned in that sacred blue fire
and returned, black as coals, dumb,
numb from the experience
to become this mendicant preacher
minister to those souls who die without sacrament
trading blessings for food
a saved soul for a full belly.
And now when I see you
crowding a carcass for the unction
or nailed against the sky like a crucifix
with the two spots of tarnished silver
beneath your wings where you'd closed them
I long to have you say a De Profundis for me
when I die, and I wonder:
Was yours a punishment or a purification?
HILDA McDONALD
EVENSONG
Sunset had called in the colours
But not yet was it dark,
The pool lay a mirror of silver
Without spot or mark.
When out from the green mirrored mangroves
Stepped a wonder of white
A great heron wandering homeward,
Before it was night.
The pool held the moon and the heron,
And the first white star,
In a beauty beyond all imagining,
As I watched from afar.
And my heart sang aloud to its Maker
In thanks and delight,
Who gave me that moment of beauty,
Before it was night.
IAN McDONALD
PINEAPPLE WOMAN
Selling pineapple is her art
Sad old woman pushing cart
Near Dutch Stabroek every day
You can find her minding tray
Full of sunripe 'Quibo pine
"Come an' buy me God-ripen pine!"
When the sun is hot and gold
01' woman get a lot of pineapple sold
Rich lady come with palmolive skin
Then the bargaining fun begin
Rich woman probably good at heart
But she got to bargain to play the part
So while silver shilling bursting her purse
She letting fly with less pence than curse
And old woman with her age and pine
Have to cut the price down fine
So she squatting down beside she tray
Twelve hard hours by the end of she day
Pineapple ripe smelling sweet of sun
Turning she belly by the time day done
Dollar fifty profit from the fat gold pine
If a day make so much she doing fine
And go down Stabroek in Maytime rain
Look for that old pine woman again
She old grey dress bursting away
Rotting and fade in the rains of May
But she under the branch of a saman tree
Still working out she destiny
Selling pines from 'Quibo fat and gold
Until the heart inside she chest get cold
Forty years by Stabroek rain and shine
Sad old woman selling pine
And when she dead by a 'Quibo charcoal pit
Nobody bother or care one shit
She was buying pine to sell in the morning
But she never reach to sell that morning
Stabroek looks the same old way
In suns of March or rains of May.
50
SON ASLEEP-AGED SIX MONTHS
Before our own. sleep of passion, dreams, and clocks
Warm wife and my proud self watch by his sovereign bed,
Over the child our smiling eyes like emperor's shine,
In his warm life our hopes spring tall as spears.
Pray God he finds a. destiny well-designed;
Against the terrific future how can he sleep so soft ?
He is not golden-armed, he is not tall or strong
So gently born, so sweetly grown, so calm
He rests soft beyond birth only half a year
Deathless he must be, no pains will visit him
He breathes quiet as white leaves of moonlight
His fist clenches like a young rose in his sleep
My son's face is serious for peace and good intent
His small heart is burning like a star.
That is not so, he is not safe forever
Death rages in man's bones all the days he lives
My son's not singular, death rages in him too.
Long time to come, long years past this proud present watching
He will find agonies enough, he will be hurt
The flesh kingly is but kings' dethronement comes.
Yet let him sleep so soft as this
Give him some sweet preliminary of life
Do not warn him too soon of cruelties and sleepless lusts.
The bribery of habits, red wounds, the iron nations' wars.
In this raw age of jealous total moods
When men soon march to orders behind dogmatic whims
We watch and deeply love and we determine this:
Take childhood's time and make a dream of it.
BASIL McFARLANE
POEM
Music a kind of sleep
imposes on this weary flesh
wind beyond silence
speech of the God who ordered
trees flowering of dark earth
light, essence of darkness
birth
Lucifer massed
in arrogant disorder all about
pale quiet strength of stellar presence
hears in a wonderful dread
music a calm
persistent tread
above the wild torment of nameless waters.
JACOB AND THE ANGEL
And shall a man
mortal though the mind
covets eternity seek only
this seek only to endure
whether failings of breath and bone,
corruption of flesh and faith?
Too thin too thin the wind
of consolation here
the outer edge of prayer
the unexo:cised inexorcisable knife
selfknowledge is closer to distant stars
whose stare is lonely and unexplained
solemn and keen and unwinking like regret
than to old Earth estranged now
a pillow of cold stone.
EDWINA MELVILLE
POEM
Savage moon,
Poignant cry
Of man
For his mate
And woman sultry
Mocking
With eyes of hate.
Lithe and lonely
Walking
Along a wall
Red skirt
Blown about her legs
And long black hair
Falling over shoulders
Barem and touching'
Breasts young and fult
Of pulsig life,
Eager, nonchalant,
A dreamer,
Just strolling
Along the wall.
Knowing
The man wordd follow.
EDGAR MITTELHOLZER
MEDITATIONS OF A MAN SLIGHTLY DRUNK
I came, and they drunkened me lightly
With a medley of liquors.
There was falernum,
There were literary disagreements,
Poetical dissonances.
Yes, but chiefly there was rum.
They talked to me of stanzas,
The ancient and the very modem.
They broached even painting,
Haggled about form,
Over Epstein concorded with reverece,
Yes, but chiefly there was rum.
We jabbered of pendulums
Pendulums that swung like my vision.
They gesticulated and bawled -
Ranting about matter,
Eulogising imagery.
Yes, but never forgetting the rum.
We slashed at Swinburne,
And we justly kicked old Kipling.
We grimaced dreadfully at Pater,
How we hacked poor Donne,
And sniffed at Rupert Brooke!
Though, always, always, mind,
There was the rum!
E. M. ROACH
TO MY MOTHER
It is not long, not manydays are left
Of the dead sun, nights of the crumbled moon;
Nor far to go; not all your roads of growth,
Love, grief, labour of birth and bone
And the slow slope from the blood's noon
Are shorter than this last.
And it is nothing. Only the lusty heroes
And those summer's sweet with lust
And wine and roses fear. The children do not;
Theirs is young Adam's innocence.
The old do not; they welcome the earth's suction
And the bone's extinction into rock.
The image of your beauty growing green,
Your bone's adolescence I could not know,
Come of your middle years, your July loins.
I found you strong and tough as guava scrub,
Hoeing the growing, reaping the ripe corn;
Kneading and thumping the thick dough for bread.
And now you've bowed, bent over to the ground;
An old gnarled tree, all her bows drooped
Upon the cross of death, you crawl up
Your broken stairs like Golgotra, and dead bones
Clutch at your dying bones .
I do not mourn, but all my love
Praise life's revival through the eternal year.
I see death broken at each seed's rebirth.
My poems labour from your blood
As all my mind burns on our peasant stock
That cannot be consumed till time is killed.
Oh, time's run past your hands made bread
To this decrepitude; but in the stream
Of time I watch the stone, the image
Of my mother making bread my boyhood long,
Mossed by the crusty memories of bread.
O may my art grow whole as her hands' craft.
I AM THE ARCHIPELAGO
I am the archipelago hope
Would mould into dominion; each hot green island
Buffetted, broken by the press of tides
And all the tales come mocking me
Out of the slave plantations where. grubbed..
Yam and cane; where heat and hate sprawled down
Among the cane-my sister sired without
Love or law. In that gross bed was bred
The third estate of colour. And now
My language, history and my names are dead
And buried with my tribal soul. And now
I drown in the groundswell of poverty
No love will quell. I am the shanty town.
Banana, sugarcane and cotton man;
Economies are soldered with my sweat
Here, everywhere; in hate's dominion;
In Congo, Kenya, in free. unfree America.
I herd in my divided skin
Under a monomaniac sullen sun
Disnomia deep in artery and marrow.
I burn the tropic texture from my hair;
Marry the mongrel woman or the white;
Let my black spinster sisters tend the church,
Earn meagre wages, mate illegally,
Breed secret bastards, murder them in womb;
Their fate is written in unwritten law,
The vogue of colour hardened into custom
In the tradition of the slave plantation.
The cock, the totem of his craft, his luck,
The obeahman infects me to my heart
Although I wear my Jesus on my breast
And burn a holy candle for my saint.
I am a shaker and a shouter and a myal man;
My voodoo passion swings sweet chariots low.
My manhood died on the imperial wheels
That bound and ground too many generations;
From pain and terror and ignominy
I cower in the island of my skin,
The hot unhappy jungle of my spirit
Broken by my haunting foe my fear,
The jackal after centuries of subjection.
But now the intellect must outrun time
Out of my lost, through all man's future years,
Challenging Atalanta for my life,
To die or live a man in history,
My totem also on the human earth.
O drummers, fall to silence in my blood
You thrum against the moon; break up the rhetoric
Of these poems I must speak. O seas,
O Trades, drive wrath from destinations.
5
55
HOMESTEAD
Seven cedars break the Trades
From the thin gables of my house:
I know the green demonic rage
When gales are trapped in their thick foliage
But weathers turn, the drought returns,
The great sun burns the green to ochre
Dry racking winds knock the boughs bare
Till they are tragic stands of sticks
Pitiful in pitiless noons
But know dusk's bounty and the moon's.
Beyond the cedars there are fields
Where one man sweated but his days
Wearying his stubborn bone.
He'd bought thick woodland for his own,
Set his axe of hope upon it
With his rugged bones of courage
And left his sons an heritage.
This heavy drudgery for a man
But plants his spirit in the earth
That blooms no fragrance of his worth.
So I write his epitaph
In his own blood of hope and faith:
"His life was simple peasant bread,
"He wrote his memoirs in his head,
"His heavy labour drained his face.
"He felt to his arthritic bone
"Both our weathers of the sun.
"God was his good friend on his fields
"In changing skies and wind and rain;
"He harvested his faith in grain".
Though his heavy days are done
He is present in the fields
In natural holy images.
He's girth and growth of all his trees,
He's on these tracks his goings made
In his slow to and fro in boots
As Earthy as his nurtured roots
To every furrow of the land.
To every shaken grace of grass
He is the spirit of the place.
An un-named, unknown slaveman's son;
Paysan, paisano; of all common
Men time-long in fields world over
In the cotton, corn and clover
Who are not told, but tell their breed
Through history's book, as passive, as
Unkillable as common grass;
Whose temperate and patient soul
The heavy loam of human earth
Feeds woods of wisdom, art and faith.
POEM
He plucked a burning stylus from the sun
And wrote her name across the endless skies
And wrote her name upon the waxing moon
And wrote her name among the thronging stars.
If the pale moon forgets he will remember,
Lovers remember though love's ghost sigh in the sun
Or whimper in despair in the large dark,
The seas are sorrows
And the seas accept the moon's dark tragedies.
The seas reflect the yearning of the stars.
His heart is weary as the endless seas.
His soul is wearier than the flowing wave,
O dark tide of no hope,
O blood of tears still sings the sun.
No cloud can blind the memory of the moon
Or blot the legend from the ageless stars.
W. ADOLPHE ROBERTS
ON A MONUMENT TO MARTI
Cuba, dishevelled, naked to the waist,
Springs up erect from the dark earth and screams
Her joy in liberty. The metal gleams
Where her chains broke. Magnificent her haste
To charge into the battle and to taste
Revenge on the oppressor. Thus she seems.
But she were powerless without the dreams
Of him who stands above, unsmiling, chaste.
Yes, over Cuba on her jubilant way
Broods the Apostle, Jose Julian Marti.
He shaped her course of glory, and the day
The guns first spoke he died to make her free.
That night a meteor flamed in splendid loss
Between the North Star and the Southern Cross.
A. J. SEYMOUR
SUN IS A SHAPELY FIRE
Sun is a shapely fire turning in air
Fed by white springs
and earth's a powerless sun.
I have the sun today deep in my bones,
Sun's in my blood, light heaps beneath my skin.
Sun is a badge of power pouring in
A darkening star that rains its glory down.
The trees and I are cousins. Those tall trees
That tier their branches in the hollow sky
And, high up, hold small swaying hands'of leaves
Up to divinity, their name for sun
And sometimes mine. We're cousins.
Sheet light, white power comes falling through the air,
All the light here is equal-vertical -
Plays magic with green leaves and, touching, wakes
The small sweet springs of breathing scent and bloom
That break out on the boughs,
And sun has made
Civilisation flower from a river's mud
With his gossamer rays of steel.
II
These regions wear sharp shadows from deep suns.
The sun gives back her earth its ancient right
The gift of violence.
Life here is ringed with the half of the sun's wheel
And limbs and passions grow in leaps of power
Suddenly flowing up to touch the arc.
Upon this energy kin to the sun
To learn the trick of discipline and slow skill,
Squaring in towns upon an empty map
Hitching rivers to great water wheels.
Taming the fire to domesticity.
Sun is a shapely fire floating in air
Watched by God's eye. The distance makes it cool
With the slow circling retinue of worlds
Hanging upon it.
Indifferently near
Move other stars with their attendant groups
Keeping and breaking pace in the afternoon
Till the enormous ballet music fades
And dies away.
Sun is a shapely fire
Turning in air
Sun's in my blood.
THERE RUNS A DREAM
There runs a dream of perished Dutch plantations
In these Guiana rivers to the sea.
Black waters, rustling through the vegetation
That towers and tangles banks, run silently
Over lost stellings where the craft once rode
Easy before trim dwellings in the sun
And fields of indigo would float out broad-
To lose the eye right on the horizon.
These rivers know that strong and quiet men
Drove back a jungle, gave Guiana root
Against the shock of circumstance, and then
History moved down river, leaving free
The forest to creep back, foot by quiet foot
And overhang black waters to the sea.
NAME POEM.
Beauty about us in the breathe of names
Known to us all, but murmured over sofly
Woven to breath of peace.
If but a wind blows, all their beauty wakes.
Kwebanna on the Waini-Indian words
And peace asleep within the syllables.
Cabacaburi and the Rupununi
Reverence is guest in that soft hush of names.
For battle music and the roll of drums.
The shock and break of bodies locked in combat
The Tramen Cliff above Imbaimadai.
Guiana, Waini are cousin water words .....
The Demerary, Desakepe and Courantyne
Flow centuries before strong tongues bewitch
Their beauty into common county names.
Through all the years before the Indians came
Rocks at Tumatumari kept their grace,
And Tukeit, Amatuk and Waratuk
Trained ear and eye for thundering Kaieteur.
And there are mountain tops that take the sun
Jostling shoulders with seaward-eyed Roraima ....
These Amerindian names hold ancient sway
Beyond the European fingers reaching,
Forever reaching in, but nearer coast
Words born upon Dutch tongues live in our speech.
The sentinel that was Kykoveral
Beterverwagting, Vlissengen and Stabroek
And sonorous toll of bells in Vergenoegen.
For French remembrance, Le Ressouvenir,
The silent and great tomb of an exile's anguish,
Le Repentir-that city of the dead .....
Simple the heritage of English names
Hid in Adventure, Bee Hive, Cove and John,
And Friendship, Better Hope, and Land of Canaan
Garden of Eden and ... so Paradise.
Out west are places blessed by Spanish tongues
Santa Rosa, white chapel on a hill .....
Beauty about us in the breathe of names,
If but a wind blows, all their beauty wakes.
TO-MORROW BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE
Ignorant,
Illegitimate,
Hungry sometimes,
Living in tenement yards
Dying in burial societies
The people is a lumbering giant
That holds history in his hand.
The efficient engineers dam the conservancies
Design the canals and the sluices
The chemists extract their sugar to the ton.
The millers service the padi into rice
And the heavy lorries and unpunctual ships
Bring ground provisions from the farms.
But always the people is a hero, a vast army
Making the raw material for skill and machines to work upon.
They frequent the cinemas
Throng the races and the dance halls
Pocket small wages with a sweating brow
And ragged clothes;
But it is their ignorant, illegitimate hands
That shape history.
They grow the cane and the rice and the ground provisions
They dig the gold and the diamonds and the bauxite
They cut the forests and build the bridges and the roads and the wall to keep
out the sea.
History is theirs,
Because history doesn't belong
To the kings, and the governors and the legislature.
History basically
Is the work men do with their hands
When they battle with the earth
And grow food and dig materials
For other people's profits and other people's skill.
And other people know it too.
The labour leaders and the politicians
Shake fists to rouse the rabble
But that giant, the people,
They say yes or no to the proposition.
Chinese running their groceries and their laundry places
Portuguese controlling the dry goods and the pawnshops
Indians saving every half of a shilling
Cutting in canefields
Breaking their backs to grow rice.
Africans tramping aback for the provisions.
Running the falls "topside" for fabulous diamonds,
Becoming the teachers, the policemen, and the Civil Servants
They are all heroes,
They make history
They are the power in the land.
And the women work patiently along with the men
And look after the children as best they can.
And the children grow
Force their way out of the slums into the professions
And stand up in the legislature.
To-day they hope
But to-morrow belongs to the people.
To-morrow they will put power behind their brow
And get skill in their hands.
To-morrow
They will make a hammer to smash the slums
And build the schools.
Like a River,.the people hold history in their hands
And To-morrow belongs to them.
PHILIP M. SHERLOCK
POCOMANIA
Long Mountain, rise,
Lift you' shoulder, blot the moon,
Black the stars, hide the skies,
Long Mountain, rise, lift you' shoulder high
Black of skin and white of gown
Black of night and candle light
White against the black of trees
And altar white against the gloom,
Black of mountain high up there
Long Mountain, rise,
Lift you' shoulder, blot the moon,
Black the stars, black the sky.
Africa among the trees
Asia with her mysteries
Weaving white in flowing gown
Black Long Mountain looking down
Sees the shepherd and his flock
Dance and sing and wisdom mock.
Dance and sing and falls away
All the civilised today
Dance and sing and fears let loose;
Here the ancient gods that choose
Man for victim, man for hate
Man for sacrifice to fate
Hate and fear and madness black
Dance before the altar white
Comes the circle closer still
Shepherd weave your pattern old
Africa among the trees
Asia with her mysteries.
Black of night and white of gown
White of altar, black of trees
"Swing de circle wide again
Fall and cry me sister now
Let de spirit come again
Fling away de flesh an' bone
Let de spirit have a home".
Grunting low and in the dark
White of gown and circling dance
Gone to-day and all control
Now the dead are in control
Power of the past returns
Africa among the trees
Asia with her mysteries.
Black the stars, hide the sky
Lift you' shoulder, blot the moon,
Long Mountain rise.
M. Q. SMITH
MELLOW OBOE
The wind breathes a mellow oboe in my ear
I from the seas of life
Have filled my cup with foam.
The tension of Time's waves has broken on
These cliffs
The menace is resolved in foam.
O beautiful
O beautiful
The cruelty.
Soon the suave night's surrender
And the mass music of the dark
Falls fragment into foam.
To apprehend the foam the waves declared
And drink the milk pure from the farm of Time.
Nebular and luminous
The stars the peaks achieve
Found foam of peaks and stars-
So bracket the stars with bubble
Fill baskets of white berries from the sea
All is a rich donation
The waves are lines of epic
The sea a deep quotation
The foam the complete poem.
I hear the sea's half-breath half-moan
Sweep in fugues through me
And the wind breathes an oboe in my ear.
HAROLD M. TELEMAQUE
ROOTS
Who danced Saturday mornings
Between immortelle roots
And played about his palate
The mellowness of cocoa beans,
Who felt the hint of the cool river
In his blood,
The hint of the cool river
Chill and sweet.
Who followed curved shores
Between two seasons.
Who took stones in his hands.
Stones white as milk
Examining the island in his hands;
And shells,
Shells as pink as frog's eyes
From the sea.
Who saw the young corn sprout
With April rain.
Who measured the young meaning
By looking at the moon.
And walked roads a footpath's width,
And calling,
Cooed with mountain doves
Come morning time.
Who breathed mango odour
From his polished cheek.
Who followed the cus-cus weeders
In their rich performance.
Who heard the bamboo flute wailing
Fluting, wailing,
And watched the poui golden
Listening.
Who with the climbing sinews
Climbed the palm
To where the wind plays most,
And saw a chasmed pilgrimage
Making agreement for his clean return.
Whose heaviness
Was heaviness of dreams,
From drowsy gifts.
*
POEM
To those
Who lifted into shape
The huge stones of the pyramid;
Who formed the Sphinx of the desert.
And bid it
Look down upon the centuries like yesterday;
Who walked lithely
On the banks of the Congo,
And heard the deep rolling moan
Of the Niger;
And morning and evening
Hit the brave trail of the forest
With the lion and the elephant;
To those
Who, when it came that they should leave
Their urns of History behind,
Left only with a sad song in their hearts;
And burst forth into soulful singing
As bloody pains of toil
Strained like a hawser at their hearts .....
To those, hail .....
H. A. VAUGHAN
DARK VOICES
There's beauty in these voices. Do not base
Your judgment purely on the affrighted street,
The howling mob, the quarrel, or repeat
Your scathing strictures on the market place.
There's beauty always urgent in this race
That baffles bondage from its sure retreat
Of song and laughter. Loud and low and sweet
There's beauty in these voices, by God's grace.
Detect two lovers underneath the stars,
Hear the lone worker as he works and sings,
The Christmas choirs whose joyous martial bars
Go forth to greet the new born King of Kings,
And, after this life's numerous frets and jars,
The friends who mourn the end of terrene things.
*
REVELATION
Turn sideways now and let them see
What loveliness escapes the schools,
Then turn again, and smile, and be
The perfect answer to those fools
Who always prate of Greece and Rome,
"The face that launched a thousand ships,"
And such like things, but keep tight lips
For burnished beauty nearer home,
Turn in the sun, my love, my love!
What palm-like grace! What poise! I swear
I prize these dusky limbs above
My life. What laughing eyes What
gleaming hair!
DEREK WALCOTT
THE YELLOW CEMETERY
"They are alive and well somewhere
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end
to arrest it."
Walt Whitman
All grains are the ash to ashes drowsing in the morning,
Wearing white stone. I passed them, not thankfuller to be
Their living witness, not noisy in salt like the near sea,
Because they are spaded to the dirt, our drowning.
As lovely as the living, and safer, to the bay's green mourners
They will unkeening bones, and they are happy.
Lost the candle and censer mysterytale, the swung smoke
of adorners
Of dying. Could they speak more than bramble, they'd be
One in the language of the sun and the bibleling froth,
Their now bread is broken stone, their wine the absent blood
They gave to days of nails.
It is enough
And greater is no grace, no surplice more serviceable than
the lap and hood
Of the seasons that grew them, and now mother them to sleep
And you alive, speak not of the unlucky dead, the sunless
eyes rotten
Under downs and saddles in a kingdom of worms.
Speak of the luckless living, that are gnawed by a misbegotten
Moon and memory;
It is a blessing past bounds to miss the dooms
Of the vertical fathom, at each suncrow
To know no anguish, cool in clothstones that flow.
The sleep in the bone, all weathers.
But we, each
Flapping boast of the crowing sun, turn in our linen graves,
Face stale mornings, old faces, but these dead on the beach
Are joyed at the dawn's blood skyed on their dearth of days.
We cocky populations fouling the fallow plains of heaven,
Shall find perfection in a cemetery under a hill.
For we have suffered so long, that death shall make all even
There shall the love grow again that once we would kill.
This is no place for the cater of herbs and honey, for beads,
Here are water, crops. seabirds, and yet here do not be brave,
Seek no fames, and do not too often pray to keep alive,
Against the brittle wick of wishes the wind in the clock strives
And wins. Was not your father such?
Gay in the burning faith of himself, but melted to forgetting?
Thank time for joys, but be not thankful overmuch,
The sun a clot of the wounded sky is setting,
Delve no heart in the sound of your soul, a man's speech burns
And is over; the tears melt, colden and stales the tallow,
And the story of your ash to ashes breath that the wind learns,
The bushes from your eyes will tell in a deeper yellow.
And there at sea, under the wave
The sea-dead, the legendary brave,
Under the windmaned horses of the sea
Float the bulged trampled dead, nudged by whales;
Their wicks windkilled too, by salty gales,
And they were so braver, less alarmed than we.
For we want to run, who do not want to drown where
There is no angel or angelus or another's helphand;
But they too ride easy and the nunnery of brown hair
Of the white girl of walls, shall be no more in the pardoner sand
Black man's denial. Heart, let us love all, the weeds
That feed the sea-herds, miracler than man's tallest deeds,
For here the living are blinder than the dead, ah
Look a rainbow sevencoloured wakes glory through the clouds and
Breasts sea and hill and cemetery in warning,
And the chained horses thunder white, no more adorning
The harbour that grows truculent at the sevenhued sky,
A canoe scuds home quickly, and indigo reigns.
Praise these but ask no more the meaning of mourning,
Than you ask a moral from the seven glory of the clouds, and
Go slowly to the hill as the gale breaks, crazy on the loud sand,
Do not talk of dying, you say, but all men are dead or sick,
In the brain and rib-hollow rooms
The candles of the eye burn and shorten, and how quick
The fine girl sleeps in her grave of hair, the grasshair tombs,
O look at the sane low populations of the democratic dead,
How all are doomed to a dome of mud, all brought to book,
Believing in a world for the perverse saint and the holy crook.
Love children now, for the sun will batter their thinklessness
away,
For there, if place, He walks, who was a lifelong child,
And when the sun is spearing them in growth, pray,
There is the kingdom of heaven in the tears of a child.
The trees, alive in a wind or generations, spin a terror of grains
In the air, in the blue and froth of the weather, the branch rains
Yellow on the graves.
We, the raisers of a God against the hand,
Wonder who is made or maker, for the God our ancestors learned,
Moses of terror, burns in no bushes,
We pray only when seas are turned
Angry, and the wild wind rushes,
And love and death we cannot understand.
The signatures of a lost Heaven remain,
The beauty of the arch, the nature not sun not rain
We want our God to be. And yet were He scanned
We the long builders of beyond this flying breath would look
Beyond the written Heavens, the wide open sea, the land like a
green book,
Would find the Author and the Author's purpose.
Ill
A swallow falls, and perhaps the sole spoken prayer
Is the hand of a leaf crossing the cold curled claws.
Where is the God of the swallows, is He where
Lives the one whom you flew young from, who all life was yours?
And yet for all these gifts, the gift that I can pray,
The mountain music, the pylon words, the painting, they are
Enough, and may be all, for they add grace by day
And night give tears as harshly as a telling star.
Were there nothing, and this the only
Life, a man has still to save the cliche of his soul, to live
With, I will say it, grace, to atone for the
Sins that all the worlds awoke before he ailed alive,
Climb there, go to the hill where another Sun is warning,
That the wicks weaken and in the halls of the heartsun, love,
For love is the stone speech that outlasts our ash and mourning.
A CITY'S DEATH BY FIRE
After that hot gospeller had levelled all but the churched sky,
I wrote the tale by tallow of a city's death by fire,
Under a candle's eye that smoked in tears, I
Wanted to tell in more than wax of faiths that were snapped like wire.
All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,
Shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar,
Loud was the bird-rocked sky, and all the clouds were bales
Torn open by looting and white in spite of the fire;
By the smoking sea, where Christ walked, I asked why
Should a man wax tears when his wooden world fails.
In town leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths
To a boy who walked all day, each leaf was a green breath
Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails,
Blessing the death and the baptism by fire.
*
AS JOHN TO PATMOS
As John to Patmos, among the rocks and the blue live air houLded
His heart to peace, as here surrounded
By the strewn silver on waves, the wood's crude hair, the rounded
Breasts of the milky bays, palms, flocks, and the green and dead
Leaves, the sun's brass coin on my cheek, where
Canoes brace the sun's strength, as John in that bleak air
So am I welcomed richer by these blue scapes Greek there
So I will voyage no more from home, may I speak here.
This island is heaven away from the dustblown blood of cities
See the curve of bay, watch the straggling flower, pretty is
The winged sound of trees, the sparse powdered sky when lit is
The night. For beauty has surrounded
These black children, and freed them of homeless ditties.
As John to Patmos, among each love-leaping air,
O slave, soldier, worker under red trees sleeping, hear
What I swear now. as John did,
To praise lovelong the living and the brown dead.
DANIEL WILLIAMS
OVER HERE
Over here where our islands
Puncture the leaden sea into a chain,
And our wish inconstant like the pilloried
Sun fatigued by the clouds, here where pain
Is narcotic, blunt and dull, frenzied
We have hoped.
Not for the nurturing of a million
Varied wish or the relish of a lotus
Pleasure; not for the temporary brazen
Triumph the coin has taught or the sick
Culture which understands only the voice
Of duped builders.
Rather the ubiquitous call of the river
For the salt panting of the sea, rather
The proud turn of the leaf's neck
For the hot kiss of the sun and the weak
Reach of the hand for the strong grasp
Of the comrade.
For here we have loved
The wet mud clinging the hoemen's feet,
Here in the soil our blood is green and
In our wine the vine is parched with the
Heat of our hope; yet untamed is the spark
Of desire, strong in young strength.
Time reaches for the harp
Of history, and in the east dawn brings
Her dower of light and flings it to her
Husband day; glance in the west, the golden
Egg will break into a myriad suns and people
Our horizon.
Look at the land, the psalms,
Singing for our sons beyond the fever of the years;
Look at the trees, the prayers,
Curtesying before the sacred scribbling of the wind,
And the clouds, the white precipitate of the sky
Like incense on the altar.
MILTON WILLIAMS
OH! PRAHALAD DEDICATED DAY
On the eve of this, Prahalad Dedicated Day,
Abeer drenched you come to me, Oh Indian girl
With your face and hands all turned crimson,
With the previous colour of your dress
undistinguishable,
And all your form reverberating an atmosphere of
festivity.
You come and you sit and you sing for me, playing on the
jaal !
The golden sound of your voice sending sweet stinging
darts to my heart
Then leaving it in exquisite jets clothed on wings of
delight
The very voice felled star-apples and sapodillas from
their trees,
The very voice ripened the cherries and gooseberries all
around.
I took you and placed you under the cherry tree
On its crest a red breast was warbling her song.
Oh the sacredness of the sight!
I dare not utter a word to you
For suddenly it came upon me like the wind ruffling the
trees
This was the very meaning of "Phagwah."
PRAY FOR RAIN
In seasons of drought the dry land cracks
Leaves turn from green to pale yellow.
On streets the asphalt reflects
The furious energy of its crystalled-burden.
"It is seasonal," the people say,
"Pray for rain."
Drought is not only an affectation
By nature to men and crops !
It is the living lie of all of us:
Young men green-vitalled
In industry
Withering to absurd anonymities ....
O comrades, perpetual drought is our heresy !
Like garbage on the downheap
We are piled : forced to exhaust
Ourselves, be divested of all our purity.
Crack, decay, and burn.
FICTION, TRAVELOGUE, HISTORY
CHRISTMAS IN THE NINETEEN-TWENTIES
P. H. DALY
When one says that Dickens invented the English Christmas, one does
not mean, of course, that he created the many forms and symbols with which
Christmas Day has ever since been sensuously as against spiritually -
enjoyed. In Pickwick Papers he gave us the exuberant Christmas of Dingley
Dell; and in The Christmas Carol, one of his five famous books on Christmas,
he drew the paradox which is the keystone of Christmas itself: that one has
reason for mirth even though one lives in squalor, provided one's heart is warm.
He gave us the paradox of Ebenezer Scrooge, who thought Christmas a nuisance,
yet fell under its magical spell.
Dickens did not create the traditional forms and symbols of the English
Christmas, which, indeed, had been lying in disdain and disarray, with the
stigma of Saturnalian opprobrium, long before he was born. These forms and
symbols of the English Christmas-yule logs, holly and mistletoe boughs,
turkey and goose, plum pudding blazing blue with lighted brandy, pantomimes
and harlequins, the Christmas Oratorio pealing from a snowbound church -
are older than Christianity itself. One recalls for the criticism which I shall
make later on the tendency of West Indian novelists to be ashamed of their
survivals, and their failure to find pleasure in proletariat idiosyncrasy at Christ-
mastime-that many of these forms and symbols are survivals of the great
Roman feast of Saturnalia, which was celebrated at the time of the year which
is our Christmastime, and in which women dressed as men and men as women,
and the slaves were the masters, and the masters the slaves. Dickens sublimated
these survivals, as an art-form and made them acceptable by the Ebenezer
Scrooges who controlled the new, urbanised and utilitarian civilization which
was sweeping over nineteenth-century England. By the peculiar brio of his
genius, he succeeded in making them reasonably imperishable. The comic
Dickens found what no West Indian novelist has yet found pleasure in pro-
letariat idiosyncrasy at Christmastime. Or is it that the West Indies have not
yet produced humorous novelists with the appetite to enjoy comic stunts like
Mother Sally and the centipede band? Novelists to extend the function of
the novel to rescuing our ancestral West Indian Christmas from decay; to make
Christmas as an art-form, a time of historic harlequinade and moral rehabilita-
tion?
Because of this convention of neglect by West Indian novelists-this
ghost of the parvenu in the West Indian novel-one fears that the ancestral
West Indian Christmas is in danger of decay. One sees, with dismay, a cracking
and splintering of the social mould of nineteen-twenties, on which one's ances-
tral Christmas had been cast. One suspects that this convention of neglect is due
to the nimbus of national consciousness which surrounds the heads of some
West Indian novelists, putting them, many of whom are from workingclass
families, on their guard against showing any appetite for proletariat idiosyncrasy,
or any sympathy for our ancestral survivals. And the vanishing Guianese
Christmas, as an ancestral institution, is built largely on proletariat foundations.
Any public notice of such an institution by some of our novelists becomes
an affront to national ambitions and West Indian nationhood. It is like a newly-
rich scullery-maid snobbing a poor relation. It is social parvenuism.
Clearly, therefore, one sees the need for throwing up protective walls
around what it left of this ancestral Christmas of ours; assailed, on the one
hand, by the intellectually respectable and socially apologetic West Indian
novel, and, on the other, by the urbanising of our rural homestead the last
ditch of the ancestral Christmas-through development programmes and so-
called 'cultivated' habits of thinking and acting. One cannot look to the
West Indian novel, at its present stage of development, to provide these pro-
tective walls. One cannot look to colonial legislators to provide these walls
either. For over colonial legislatures the same haze of national consciousness
hovers; and, in the case of Guiana, it has reached such a stage that legislation
has banished the masqueraders to areas outside the city. The West Indian
novelist is squeamish about enjoying his proletariat pleasures, such as the
centipede band and the Mother Sally. He may approach these things in a spirit
of censure or contempt, but the parvenu in him warns against approaching them
with a good appetite. To have an appetite is to relish, and one dare not relish
these things. One must keep up European appearances. When the focal point
of the West Indian novel shifts from London to Kincston. Georgetown, or
Port of Spain, one may be oneself. One may then relish, as Dickens did, pro-
letariat idiosyncrasy and tribal survivals at Christmastime.
Yet what is there for one to be ashamed of in the ancestral Guianese
Christmas of the nineteen-twenties?-one's Childhood Christmas! Those were
the Christmases of the fantasically decorated Mother Sally, or Congojumbie,
gigantically tall-I can remember seeing one lady as tall as twenty feet !-
rolling on her barrel, through street after street. To roll on a barrel for hours
along a street, oftimes turning sharp corners, flouncing on one's mobile stage,
mimicing and pantomiming, wriggling one's hips and propelling oneself, yet
retaining one's balance, it a feat of endurance and art. A tribute to the barbarian
energy of our ancestors The extinction-I write the word with a heartache-
of the Mother Sally and the centipede band, means that our Christmases are
becoming less artful and more artificial: poorer in historic pageantry. Mother
Sally was an expression of history in harlequinade. Nowadays, one almost finds
oneself observing an imported Christmas. instead of the real. rumbustious thing.
Our dictionary of colloquial terms, too, is going to the dogs. In the nineteen-
twenties one called an unusually tall, overdressed pirouetting female a 'regu-
lar Mother Sally'-a censure which never failed as a corrective.
The nineteen-twenties were the Christmases when masqueraders were
artists at wiggling and rolling their hips, and few people know that this sort of
dance was a throw-back to the Sex Dance of the slaves. The Sex Dance, the
Comfu Dance, the dance of the masqueraders, one can trace, in them, an un-
broken lineage. The centipede bands, strumming out their torrid, dynamic
disharmonies, were offshoots of the African slave dance, The masqueraders,
snapping their fingers as they wiggled and rolled their hips, used a language
as clear and concise as any spoken tongue. Few know that this finger-snapping
goes back to the ingenuity of the slaves, who used it as a language to defeat the
Dilution System. The Dilution System, as I have seen it described, was the mixing
in the gangs of slaves taken from various tribes, and speaking different dialects
to prevent them understanding one another and plotting revolts. The slaves fell
back on the device of snapping-fingers (the beating of tom-toms having been
illegalised) as a language. It was a rude form of morse; and, as the continuing
slave revolts showed, it finally rendered the Dilution System innocuous as a
conversation curb. All that is left of these survivals now is a memory-a terrain
which we can enter only in imagination: a street-corner where Mother Sally's
head knocks against the street-lamp shade; where the reality-or illusion-
of vanished epoch can be recollected only in silence and tranquillity; a sheltered
niche where the measureless amplitude of the mind can recreate the Past. To
the Past, then let us go.
With what deep stirring one heard the fist drum-beats and the rattle of
kettle drums, the clash of cymbals and the shriek of flutes, the screech of conch
shells and the deep baying of the horns, as the masqueraders came out to
practise on the first day of November. No steelband today can hit one as hard
in the emotional solar plexus as that centipede band, bringing with it lost echoes
of the tom-toms on the old slave plantation. The bands practised 'in the raw'-
to wear Christmas costume during practice would be to spoil the dramatic
suspense-the real essence of the ancestral Christmas. At the street-corner,
where, in the nineteen-twenties, big, black beetles whirled under the light,
while hundreds of others lay stunned on the ground, the bands beat out their
merry melodies. Their appearance was the signal for cottage folk-urban Cus-
todians of the Ancestral Christmas-to 'strip the house'.
Stripping the house could have been done in a day, but the dramatic
suspense must not be disturbed. So the stripping was drawn out over a month.
Stripping meant tearing the carpet from the floor, tearing paper from walls.
tearing carpets from chairs, tearing down the hanging-lamp. Having torn down
all movable property from portico and drawing-room, one turned one's attention
to the dining-room as the second week in November dawned. Names of furni-
ture now forgotten-the What-not, the dinner-wagon, the wagonette, the mata-
pee, the conquintay-box, the grinding-jug. the old easy-chair, the cowpistle,
banging high over the wagonette, all fell under blistering siege of washing soda
and soap, borax and vinegar, sandpaper and broken glass, in a frenzy of scrub-
bing, removing all traces of last December's varnish, and getting them nicely
in the nude to be varnished again. In the third week of November, the stripping
lunacy was extended to bathroom, dry closet, kitchen, fowl pens, dog kennel,
rat traps, and the top of the water vat, in a confusion of scrubbing, soaping,
sandpapering, bumping, hammering, rasping, gasping and pushing, which rival-
led the pandemonium of the band at one's favourite street corner.
Slowly, grimly, methodically, with the precision of Scottish bagpipers
performing a solemn slow march, the campaign was extended to the bedroom
as November's last week came on. The big, four-poster mahogany bed, an in-
terior skyscraper perched on its four blocks, four feet high, was pulled down,
pulled to pieces, peeped at for bugs, sniffed at where the blood of bugs stank,
purified with sandpaper, and made ready for varnishing. Now the entire cottage,
confused and topsy-turvy, lay in a state of prostration-and so lay many of the
occupants !
The dawning of December was the signal to 'set' one's homemade wines.
Winemaking, as a ritual, was one of the most important ceremonies in creating
the correct, nostalgic climate of scents necessary to the ancestral Christmas.
Jamoon wine, banana wine, lime wine, orange wine, soursop wine, rice wine,
corn wine, gooseberry wine, each wine was set in its own wine jar; each jar had
a piece of black crepe over its head, all resembling a team of condemned men
with the death cap over their faces, ready for the gallows. Shoulder to shoulder,
back to the wall, faces in the sun, the wine jars stood, proclaiming to all visitors
that Christmas was near. After wine 'setting' beer making. Ginger beer, sorrel
beer, currant beer and 'fly', each beer to its jar; shoulder to shoulder, backs to
the wall, faces in the sun.
As the second week in December starts, one began the Rubric of the
Pepperpot. Into grandmother's twelve-gallon iron pot went the ingredients of the
pepperpot: cowheel, cowface, pigface, breast, oxtail, pigtail, every conceivable
kind of meat went ritualistically into the pot. The scent of wine fomenting, t'-e
scent of beer, the scent of pepperpot being stewed, the scent of Liberian coffee
beans being parched-it was a combination of pleasant aromas which now per-
vade one's cottage as the calendar reads-December 15, 1925.
On December 15, one 'set' one's rice for luck. Two dozen pots and pans
were filled with padi and water and left in the dew every night. The dank scent
of padi soaked in water was added to the scent of wine, beer, pepperpot. and
freshly ground Liberian coffee. But a fourth pungent scent was to commingle
with them all, in this fast mobilization of nostalgic aromas. This was the scent
of varnish. One hardly smells the scent of varnish now. One smells furniture
polish and furniture oil, as the ancestral Christmas slowly retreats before new-
fangled refinements. Anyway, varnishing usually began in complete reverse to
the stripping of house. That is, while one stripped from portico to rat trap. one
varnished from rat trap to portico. Why? A continuation of the process of
dramatic suspense. The portico and the drawing-room were the show-pieces of
the Christmas decoration; and the show pieces in the ancestral Christmas, like
the climax to a good short story, must be left for the last. Now one's cottage
was a nest of nostalgic scents, noticeable as far away as one's favourite street
corner, where Mother Sally's head knocked against the street lamp shade.
With December 24, came cakemaking, souse-making, and blackpudding-
making; doughboy-making, cornpone-making, and conki-making. Ah! This
was a woman's day. It was stimulating to see them at work. 'Picking' their
currants and 'picking' their prunes, and grinding them with the old ale jug on
a slab of marble grindstone. No modern mill for these cottage folk of the nine-
teen-twenties. As they ground, they hipped and dipped, now left, now right,
over and under, in a flurry of hipwork which rivalled the masqueraders outside.
As Christmas day dawned, the last nail was hammered and the last blind went
up in the portico. The air in one's cottage was now charged with scents; no,
not scents, charged with the anaesthetics of Christmas: Fresh varnish and freshly
ground coffee, pepperpot and homemade wines and beer; blackpudding and
souse and ginger beer and doughboy. One inhaled deeply, contendedly. And, if
one was tired, one sank down on grandmother's ottoman, lulled into a haze by
the anaesthetics of Christmas, to listen to the bands, at the street corer where
Mother Sally knocked her head against the lamp shade.
THE STORY OF KYKOVERAL
by VERE T. DALY
KYKOVERAL today is our oldest historical relic, and it should be
visited by all who have pride of country in their hearts. Its name was doubtless
an inspiration, for it "Looked" or "Kyked-over-al" the waters of the Essequebo,
Mazaruni and Cuyuni. Provided we have sufficient leaven of humility in our
hearts, we would do ourselves no harm to take as our watch-word "Kyk-over-al!"
It has now been established beyond reasonable doubt that Kykoveral was
founded in 1616. The trustworthiness of Major John Scott, on whose authority this
statement was first made, was once contemptuously denied; but Dr. George
Edmunston, in a series of learned articles published in the English Historical
Review, has shown, by comparison with Dutch and Spanish contemporary
records, that Scott is entirely to be trusted.
By close examination and careful deduction Dr. Edmunston has recon-
structed for us the story of the founding of Kykoveral.
Early in the seventeenth century there was at the Spanish settlement of
San Thome on the Orinoco a Dutchman by the name of Adrian Groenewegen.
He was the Spanish factor at San Thome, but when a change of policy had come
about in the little settlement, Groenewegen quit the Spanish service and went
back to his old masters in Holland.
He was at once engaged by Peter Courteen and Jan de Moor end put in
charge of an expedition to Essequebo, where on his arrival with a mixed force
of Englishmen and Zeelanders in two ships and a galiot, he built a fort and
established a settlement on the island of Kykoveral at the water-meet of the
Essequebo, Mazaruni, and Cuyuni rivers.
Until Dr. Edmunston took up the cudgel in defence of Scott (who was a
notorious swindler in his private life) every bit of the above was discredited.
But the acceptance of Scott's story has now shown how false are earlier accounts
which tell of the founding of Kykoveral between 1581 and 1598 and the finding
of an old fort of alleged Portuguese construction.
In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was formed. Its main aim being
the capture of Brazil, which belonged to the Portuguese, its first notable act
was to send an expedition of twenty-six ships to raid San Salvador. It is probable
that official attention was not paid to Essequebo before 1623, when the Zeeland
Chamber began to show special interest in the post. Jacob Canyn, a ship's
captain, was the Company's first agent. He contracted to serve for three years.
but in 1626 we find him asking to be released. It is to Jan Van der Goes must go
the honour of being the leader of the first official occupation of Essequebo.
In 1895 the question as to the respective boundaries of the Republic of
Venezuela and the Crown Colony of British Guiana caused a world-wide stir;
but war between the United States of America (acting for and on behalf of the
Republic of Venezuela) and Great Britain was averted when an arbitration
treaty was signed between the British Ambassador and Senhor Andrade at
Washington on February 2, 1897. Working on both sides were some of the ablest
professors in the world, and one of the difficulties they had to face was to decide
which of the two accounts of the founding of Kykoveral was to be accepted-
Scott's, or that which could be gleaned from the minutes of the West India
Company. In the American case, Scott's account was treated with contempt;
and in the decision handed down by the tribunal which met in Paris, it is
clear that Scott was discredited.
The apparently irreconcilable difficulty was this: If Groenewegen in
1616 had established a settlement, why was it necessary for the West India
Company to establish another sometime between 1623 and 1626. What had
happened to Groenewegen's settlement? Had it failed?
By close analysis of the documents which have come down to us Dr.
Edmunston has shown that the official occupation of Kykoveral did not disturb
the settlement under Groenewegen. Undoubtedly the old settlers must have
viewed the new ones with suspicion, and vice versa; but on the whole the
fortunes of the Company's trading post hardly affected the Courteen's colony.
How reasonable this conclusion is may easily be seen when one begins
to read of attempts made by the West India Company to suppress the activities
of a body of private traders. We find in 1634, for example, Abraham van Pere,
and the Zeeland Chamber instructing their deputies, who were being sent to a
meeting of the *Nineteen, to request, and even insist, that no colonists or
other persons shall be at liberty to navigate to the Wild Coast (Guiana) except
this Chamber and Confrater van Pere alone"; and this request having failed
we find the Zeeland Chamber the next year passing a resolution to the effect
that "the trade to the wild coast shall be done by the Company alone and by no
private individuals."
In 1635 the Company's settlement was in such a bad way that the Zeeland
Chamber's Committee of Commerce and Finance sat to decide whether or not
it was profitable to keep it. At that time there were in the Company's employ-
ment not more than thirty men, whose main business was that of exchanging
the articles of European make for annatto dye, which was then in great demand
in Europe for use in the manufacture of cheese and other products.
Presumably, the report of the Chamber's Committee was favourable, for
the official occupation of Essequebo continued. The discovery that sugar-cane
was growing in the Colony may have been responsible for this decision, for it is
about this time (1637) that we find the first mention of sugar in the minutes of
the Zeeland Chamber.
*The Executive of the Dutch West India Company.
But if official Essequebo was in a precarious condition, the same cannot
be said of the settlement under Groenewegen. In 1624 it was visited by one
Jesse de Forest and in 1627 by Captain Plowell, the discoverer of Barbados.
Plowell's visit was for the ostensible purpose of obtaining seeds and roots for
planting in Barbados, but his real motive was to reinforce the colony. "There
I lefte eight men," he writes, "and lefte a Cargezon of trade for that place."
In 1637, when the Zeeland Chamber had just decided not to abandon its
post, Groenewegen was leading an expedition against San Thome-a state of
affairs which shows that the Courteen's settlement was in a stronger position
than the Company's.
It is certain that the first fort built on Kykoveral by Groenewegen was
not of stone, for in 1627, and again in 1631, van der Goes was promised a fort
of brick. Failure to fulfil this and other promises caused van der Goes to return
home with the whole lot of his colonists in 1632, He was, however, re-engaged.
and by 1634 he was back at Kykoveral with two assistants. Significantly, in 1639,
he was addressed for the first time as "Commandeur," and one may reasonably
presume that this title was given him because of the fact that there were now
soldiers under him. A further conclusion that can be drawn is that the promised
fort had been completed, and that the soldiers were housed there. It was, as van
Berkel described it thirty-one years later, "of quadrangular shape, having
below the magazine, and above three apartments in which soldiers are housed,
a room for the Commandant and one for the Secretary, which at the same time
serves to store the cargoes."
Meanwhile, the rivalry between the Company and the Courteens for the
mastery of Kykoveral was gradually coming to an end. By 1645 the position
was so much easier that Groenewegen was made Governor by the West India
Company; nevertheless, in the same year, the Zeeland Chamber suggested to
the Company, that in applying for a renewal of its charter it should stipulate
that no private individuals be allowed to trade to Essequebo. This, however,
was the last protest, for in 1650 Groenewegen was not only Governor, but also
Commandeur of the troops. The two colonies finally fused in 1664, for in that
year Jan de Moor died and Groenewegen definitely became a Company's servant.
Groenewegen died at his post in 1664. He was, as Scott says, "the first
man that took a firm footing in Guiana by the good liking of the natives ....."
As an associate of Captain Plowell he was responsible for giving substantial
assistance to Barbados. A story goes that when it became known in Essequebo
that the Indians whom he had sent with Plowell to Barbados were enslaved,
he was hard put to show that he was not party to such a diabolical scheme. He
solved the situation by marrying an Indian woman by whom he had a son,
Amos Groenewegen, who was later post-holder in Demerara (circa 1680-1700).
The year after Groenewegen's death Kykoveral saw its first serious
action. Commercial rivalry had brought the English and the Dutch into conflict,
and in 1665 Major John Scott was sent by Lord Willoughby, then governor of
Barbados, to raid Dutch settlements in Guiana. After devastating Pomeroon,
Scott proceeded up the Essequebo and captured Kykoveral, leaving there twenty-
eight men under Captain Keene before returning to Barbados to boast of his
conquest.
Scott mentions in his report that he was able to secure for his troops
73,788 lbs. of sugar, and this throws some light on the activities of the settlement.
That the Indian trade in anatto was still the chief occupation of the settlers
there can be no doubt; but Prince Sugar was already threatening to usurp the
throne of King Anatto.
The British occupation, however, was not destined to be long. The first
difficulty of the troops was with the Indians, who refused to give them supplies;
then the French, who were the allies of the Dutch, came and bombarded the
fort; finally, a force under Bergenaar, the Commandeur of Berbice, travelling
overland by a path that is probably now part of the Rupununi Cattle Trail, and
down the Essequebo, reached Kykoveral and recaptured it. Meanwhile, the
States of Zeeland, hearing of the fate of their beloved Essequebo, had sent
Admiral Crynssen to the rescue. Crynssen arrived after Bergenaar had effected
its recapture, but he took the colony over in the name of the States of Zeeland
and instituted one Baerland, Commandeur.
The Peace of Breda, signed in 1667, brought hostilities to a close.
Pomeroon was now completely deserted, but Kykoveral was recovering gradually
from Scott's blow.
There was now some difficulty in finding an owner for the colony, but after
long and tedious negotiations the Zeeland Chamber of the West India Company
took it over once again. Hendrick Rol was made Commandeur; and though a
third Anglo-Dutch War was fought in the meantime, Kykoveral was not
molested.
But this was not to be for long. Louis XIV's ambitions soon precipitated
Europe into more wars, and during the War of the Spanish Succession Kykoveral
was attacked (1708). To the lasting shame of Commandeur van der Heyden
Resen, it must be written that instead of sallying forth to meet the enemy he
ignominiously shut himself up with his troops in the Fort. Some resistance was
given at Plantation Vryheid (Bartica) by the owner and his slaves; but after
two had been killed and a few injured the defenders dispersed.
Captain Ferry, the leader of the French expedition, took his departure on
the receipt of a ransom of 50,000 guilders, paid in slaves, meat, provisions, and
pieces of eight. But Essequebo's cup of bitterness was not completely full.
Two more French privateers sailed up the river the next year (1709) and com-
pleted the work of destruction. They plundered and burnt to their heart's content,
took two hogshead of sugar that were being prepared for export, and left on
their departure but two sugar-mills standing.
These two raids on Kykoveral soon woke up the planters to the alarming
fact that the Fort could defend neither the colony nor the plantations. A fort,
more strongly fortified, and more strategically placed, was needed, especially
now that the fertile alluvial coastslands were attracting the planters lower and
lower down the river. Flag Island (now Fort Island) was decided upon as the
best site for the new fort, which was so advanced by 1739 that the seat of govern-
ment was transferred there.
In 1744 Fort Zeelandia (as the new fort on Flag Island was called) was
completed. Kykoveral thereafter was neglected even though it was Gravesande's
intention to have it reconditioned that very year. In 1748 it was proposed to
raze it, and in 1750 it was reported abandoned. In 1755, however, it was again
fortified, because of an expected Spanish invasion; but after the scare had
passed it was allowed to fall into a state of dilapidation again.
Kykoveral today is our oldest historical relic, and it should be visited by
all who have pride of country in their hearts. Its name was doubtless an inspira-
tion, for it "Looked" or "Kyked-over-al" the waters of the Essequebo, Mazaruni
and Cuyuni. Provided we have a sufficient leaven of humility in our hearts, we
would do ourselves no harm to take as our watch-word-"Kyk-over-al I"
WARAMURIE.
by CELESTE DOLPHIN
Unlike Kwe'banna, a little Amerindian Mission at the top of its fifty
steps notched out of a red-brick hill which rises suddenly and almost straight
up out of the Waini, one comes very quietly and gradually upon Waramurie.
One crosses the Atlantic from the Pomeroon into the Moruca mouth,
and after the first three hundred yards where fallen trees impede rapid progress,
the river makes a series of hairpin turns and twists now to the right, now to the
left, so that sometimes after one has travelled for an hour in the small mail-
boat one is almost back or at some point parallel to where one started.
On either side of the river, huge giant trees overhang, casting their re-
flection into the clear, black water in a quivering cross-stitch pattern. Some-
times they bend over and clasp hands and shut out the sky, and then for a
period they would toss their heads back and so let in the sun. But one usually
comes upon Waramurie in the quiet of the afternoon, Waramurie or Warrau
worry with its white sand rising gradually from the banks of the river.
At the sound of the mail-boat horn dozens of little children can be seen
running quickly down the white sandhill to collect their letters. As they reach
the water's edge they leap into their corials, some just large enough to hold one
small brown body. Dipping paddles skilfully into the water they soon surround
the mail-boat shouting "Letter for me? Anything for me?" Then one gets a
clear idea how very significant these fortnightly mail days are to people in
remote areas. It is a lovely sight to see the gleaming brown naked bodies of the
small boys as they swim up to the sides of the mail-boat and hold out a wet
hand for their mothers' letters.
Getting out of the mail-boat with our precious food-box we made our
way slowly up to the top of the mission. The ascent though gradual was long
and the white sand soft and loose, so every three steps we made we slipped
back two. The children followed us curiously, offering to help with the bags-
visitors are always welcome at Waramurie. As we reached the top of the hill,
the Catechist met us-he was half Indian, a Cubukru,-and an Indian guide.
This Warrau Indian spoke English with exaggerated correctness and precision,
but the clipped staccato intonation of his own native Warrau made him very
pleasing to hear.
As we looked around, over there to the right of the troolie rest house was
a large mound almost a hillock crowned with a large cross. The Amerinidan
stretched out his right arm pointing to the cross "Waramurie" he said. It
seemed a little dramatic then. But the story goes that years and years ago the
Caribs and Arawaks were continuously fighting each other on this mission.
Periodically the Caribs would come stealthily down through the forest and
seek out the Arawak with bow and poisoned arrow, and a bloody battle would
ensue, after which the victors would bury the bones of the dead on that special
spot over which the cross stood. Later the Arawaks who had been able to escape
would pay a return call and come down upon the Carib crying vengeance and
they would pile up Carib bones on that very spot. This feud between the two
tribes lasted for several years until they became extinct in that area, but years
and years of piling bones on bones had grown the mound into a hill. Very much
later, the Warrau Indians came and settled on that spot. But the legend goes,
the spirits of the dead periodically troubled these new settlers and caused much
Warrau worry, until 1928 when a cross was set upon this mound of bones and
a priest blessed the spot and so forever quieted the evil spirits that troubled
Waramurie.
It seemed a fantastic story but it is not a mound of sand and is really
composed of bricks and shells and arts of bone. When it rains, some of it is
broken away and one can pick up bits of bone skull that are said to be human.
But no one is indiscreet enough to attempt to seek these bones in the presence
of a Warrau, as they believe that would disturb the sleeping spirits and start
Warrau worry all over again.
Warrau worry troubled me.
It is a beautiful mission on a white sandy clearing with dense forest
behind. There were many houses of the usual type seen in the interior-four
bamboo uprights covered with troolie with two or three family hammocks
slung at one end. The family hammock was an ingenious contraption. Imagine
the ordinary hammock but with three of four storeys-mother and father
would occupy the top flat, boys in the second and the girls at the bottom. And
this is all held together between the same two pieces of rope as the usual one.
Walking around, the Indian guide introduced us to everyone and we were shown
over the whole mission. We saw a woman making cassava bread circles two
feet in diameter, that wou'd last the family a week. One broke off what one
needed for one meal and then the rest was hung upon a hook inside the house
until needed again.
We met an old man who was exceedingly friendly to us. He walked with
the spring of a boy of nineteen and yet he had the face of Old Kaie. I couldn't
resist asking him his age. He answered: "It was 1886. I think, when my
mother, who was wedded to my father, gave birth to a son, which is I". We
learnt that a man of 40 would give his age as anything from seventeen to ninety-
five.
He told us how they made Cassirie and how they made Paiwarrie, the
more intoxicating of the two forest drinks. They chewed the sugar cane with
certain other herbs and fruit and berries and spat it out into a large bin and
trampled on it in a ceremonial dance of shuffling steps for hours on end and
then left it to ferment. After a period -o many days. the paiwarrie was ready,
a thick dark liquid tasting like stout. If one partook of this drink at certain
periods one wanted to remain quite happily in the bush forever. But more than
that at times of feasting and dancing, in the midst of the Culebra and the
Tengereh, as excitement grows and bodies move in frenzied patterns, a too
liberal drink of paiwarrie causes feasting to end in fighting and then Waramurie
was in danger of Warrau worry.
He talked late into the forest night, and it seemed that we had hardly
got into our hammocks when the bell ringer came up to our hut calling us to
church. The catechist walked over for us and stated that it was necessary to
hold services twice weekly as "these people" believed in "iniquity".
I wondered what sort of iniquity was peculiar only to Waramurie. He
explained the tribal belief in the Piaiman. Whatever happened was because of
the good will or bad will of the Piaiman. If the dogs did not scent danger
in time to give a warning and a tiger sneaked out of the forest and carried off a
child, they swore that the Piaiman was at work. Whatever happened-if sickness
came-if death came suddenly-if too much rain, if not enough rain it was the
Piaiman man. Oh yes, these people believed in iniquity indeed. He didn't intend
this to be funny.
It was time for the service, the men, women and children trooped in and
sat and talked to each other, quite informally. One lady had fixed her hair in
four plaits and on each was a different coloured ribbon. It was unfortunate that
the catechist had some difficulty with his 'r's" and ended all the twelve responses
in a loud voice so that everyone was sure to hear "And twust in the Lawd fow
he is gwasus". It was a little impossible to be wholly reverent.
Immediately after Church followed vigorous games of rounders, leaping
and swimming. Then a large meal of fruit. But we had to leave rather hurriedly
to catch the tide.
Over the height of Waramurie. the breeze comes in from the river, cool
and fresh smelling, and Warrau worry seemed suddenly all blown away as the
mail-boat took us back to the mouth of the Moruca.
FENCES UPON THE EARTH
by WILSON HARRIS
At noon the truck stopped at a huge clearing on the Hinterland Road.
Every body climbed out stiffly with a grand feeling of relief. A hill fell away grad.
ually from the road, and there was a path going down. After I had had my sand-
wiches I set out for a stroll. Soon I had left the clearing where the lorry had
stopped. Soon the mighty trees closed in over my head; yet not entirely, for many
bright sunbeams were clinging like innumerable butterflies to the high branches
far up at the tops of the trees.
I remember something I had read somewhere a long time ago. Something
about people hearing the trees grow in forests. And I thought that surely I would
hear the trees grow in this forest. They were so solid, so timeless. One seemed
each moment to hear them quietly settling deeper and deeper; their mighty roots
thrusting farther and farther into the ancient earth. It was all very strange and
fantastic and beautiful.
Suddenly at a turn in the path I came upon a creek at the foot of the hill.
A man was standing by the creek drinking and bathing his hands. He had not
heard me approach. The sand underfoot had muffled my footsteps. My first
impulse was to go forward and speak to him. But I was struck by something
about him. I felt I would like to stand quietly by and wa'ch him. I felt he had
something important to tell me, but not with words. Something important he
would tell me simply, by his movements, by the lift of his head, by his hands,
and by his feet moving upon the ground. I slipped quietly into the bush at the
side of the track, and hugged close against the spur of a huge tree. From there I
could watch him, without being seen.
And now what words may I use to describe the feelings that came upon
me at the sight of this man? I felt no shame that I had to stand by, hiding from
him like a robber, or a thief in the night. This was inevitable. I believed in the
rightness of my action. It was the thing to do, here and now. Drawing room con-
ventions did not hold at this pace or time. Dimensions had altered. Time had
altered. In their place each moment unfolded itself slowly and deliber-
ately, with immense secrecy, with the deep urgency of growth, a part of the
pattern of the dynamic earth.
It is important that I should say what I felt when I looked at this man
standing by the creek. But I may as well tell you here and now that this is im-
possible, because what I felt was wordless. Many happenings in this world defy
art or language, and this was one of those happenings.
I knew when I looked at this man that I was very happy watching him. I
believe looking at him, I knew in those moments the greatest happiness in my
life. For the first time that I could remember I looked upon a human being,
standing upon the earth, not falsely, by force or subterfuge, or bravado, or by
any sort of empty pretension, but very simply, as though to own the earth were
to carry the most natural and easeful burden in the world.
I saw that the man was preparing to leave, and I felt sorry that he was
going. He had picked up a few fishes he had been cleaning, emptied his
saucepan into the creek, and was stooping finally for his axe; but, at that
moment, a loud shout came from the bend in the path, where I had first seen
him. He did not show any surprise, but picking up his axe, turned very slowly,
as though he were vaguely concerned at this intrusion on his solitude. What he
saw did not perturb him much, nevertheless a slight frown had gathered be-
tween his brows.
It was John Muir who had shouted: a very angry John Muir. But
I have forgotten you may not remember John Muir. John Muir is the representa-
tive of the big mining company from South Africa or Australia or somewhere
that has taken huge concessions on this territory to work gold and diamonds.
We had both travelled on the British South American Hinterland Road
that morning and when we had stopped for lunch, and I had come on my stroll,
I had left him busy supervising the unloading of his heavy equipment.
He passed quite close to me now, and I could sense his wrath and bel-
ligerency. Anger. I thought, did not suit him. He was too corpulent. His face was
fat, and his hands were fat. And he seemed a very alien and ridiculous figure
to find in this part of the world. But when I heard what he was saying I was
shocked into urgency. I knew suddenly he was a strong man and a ruthless one,
despite appearances. I knew there was great danger in his words, that something
terrible was liable to happen. He was shouting, "You bloody fool! What in
hell d'ye mean by messing in my creek? D'ye know you're trespassing? Get to
hell off this land !"
But the man by the creek facing John Muir did not move. I had a
splendid view of him now. His face was very dusky, dusky as the bark of the
tree against which I was standing. His hair was black like coals and crisp on
his forehead. It made the duskiness of his skin seem lighter and browner by
contrast. He wore a brief vest, and shorts, and was barefooted. He stood very
easy and very quiet, as a man would, who stands by his own hearth, waiting
to greet the stranger who is within his doors. His limbs were powerful. They
had the perfection of the young trees that stand rooted in the forests, breathing
forth an ageless symmetry in their being.
The sharp, bitter words assailed him but as vet he showed no sign of
anger. He brushed them aside in his wordless fashion. He was full of patience and
dignity. He was full of magnanimity. His language was the language of poise,
of gesture. He felt that his presence was enough. It would speak for him with
finality and precision. His attitude implied that it was a bit puzzling, all the
noise and confusion. The stranger could not mean what he was saying. Surely
he would explain what it was all about without so much fuss I However it would
not do to be hasty. Haste was bad. He would wait, and listen to all the words
that were being spoken. He himself did not need words. His presence was enough.
It was final.
I saw that John Muir's anger had turned into something cold and calcula-
ting and bitter. His strong and ruthless nature could not tolerate this silent
dignity. He must shock this man into action.He must wring from him words or
protests or subservience. He must impress upon him that he was master. He
spoke horrible words. Slowly, in answer to his words, I felt that a tide of fury
had begun to rise like a flood of bitter waters. It was a wordless fury, the most
terrible fury in the world. I could have cursed John Muir for his stupidity, for
his lust, for the blindness that lay in the midst of his strength and his ruthless-
ness. Yet, after reflection, I am not sure that he was blind. Maybe he was
courting a battle of wills. Maybe he was courting violence. I am not sure. What
is there, a man may be sure of, at such moments?
And I was not so much concerned about John Muir. It was the man by
the creek that held my interest. I was afraid for him. I sm baffled to explain
the nature of my fear. But I felt he was in danger. I felt he might lose his
mastery over the earth. That mastery that had seemed to me so patent and
obvious a thing, part of his birthright, the gift of the Unknown God. I felt
that he might be swept into madness. I remembered those horrible whirlpools
one sees sometimes in dangerous rivers, and I felt he might allow himself to be
sucked down by his fury into the bottomless whirlpools of his own nature.
When suddenly I saw him lift his hands. I knew it was the end. There
was violence in those hands. John Muir would never escape. And then, as if to
precipitate the threatening disaster, John Muir spoke words that I felt must
surely seal his doom-
"I shall drive you off the land. I shall chase you and your people off the
land. I shall put up fences. Fences to keep you off, that's what. D'ye hear me?"
Surely it is plain that only a miracle could have saved John Muir after
that! Tell me. do you not agree with me? Imagine a man living on a spot of
land. He has lived there all his life. He is bound to the land by innumerable
ties. His forefathers were there before him. They lived and died on the land.
Would you dare to tell that man. you would put up fences upon his land? That
you would drive him off the land?
Only a miracle would save you after that. Only a miracle could save
John Muir. The funny thing is. the miracle happened. The miracle happened
and John Muir was saved.
The transition was baffling. The transition from fury to calmness. I felt
the shock of that transition. I saw the effort, the horror of the last few moments.
the darkness on the face of the man standing by the creek. I saw his hands filled
with a terrible eagerness, grow calm and easy again. It was over in a moment.
A moment, as the books say, that was an eternity. I know it is incredible. Few
men would believe what I say, that such fury had passed into calmness. But I
swear it. It is true. A miracle had happened. For how else can this thing be
described, but as a miracle?
Suddenly John Muir laughed, a laugh of triumph. He felt he had scored.
He felt he had won a battle of wills, and was now master. I looked at the man
by the creek, and I knew better. In a flash I saw the truth. I saw a little of the truth
behind the miracle. It is funny how one gets these flashes. Maybe it was some
trivial act performed. The man by the creek might have moved his hand on his
axe in some peculiar fashion; he might have shuffled his feet in a peculiar fashion.
It might have been the lift of his head. I do not know. But in a flash he had
spoken to me in his wordless language. What he said was this :-Let the stranger
build his fences. Something divine in me prevents me from killing him. I could
kill him easily. I could crush his flabbiness to pulp. But to what end? What is
the use of violence? There has been enough violence on the earth. Nothing can
be built or preserved by violence. I have no fences to build, I shall trust to my
destiny. I shall trust to the forces that brought me on this spot I call my home.
I shall trust to the deep things that tie me to the earth to give me my rightful
place in the sun. These things shall never fail me. I know, I believe. I keep faith
with the earth. I trust God. That is enough. There is no other way. I shall be
patient.
He turned abruptly. He swung his axe across his shoulder. I saw him take
a path, known only to himself, along the creek, in the thick forest. The trees
clustered protectingly about him. They and he spoke the same language, the
wordless language of being, the language of solidity.
When he was gone, John Muir laughed again. But his laugh to me was
hollow. A miracle had happened. I believe humbly that I had seen a little of
of the truth behind the miracle. But John Muir did not understand. I do not
know whether he will ever understand.
Suddenly I heard the impatient honk of the truck blowing far back on
the road: I guessed that my friends were impatient to be on their way again.
All around the deep forest seemed alive and whispering. Everything was still
the same as before. Even the sun-bright butterflies. I had noticed when I had
first entered the forest were still clinging to their precarious perch far up over-
head on the tops of the mighty trees of the forest.
Yes, I know what you will say. The words I have used are inadequate.
Forgive me. I know it was inevitable that it should be so. The whole thing had
been secret and wordless.
THE SPRINGING
by ROGER MAIS
You could put out your hand and feel the sap rising in the trees, the sun
warm and lingering, drawing it up to the rich springing where the young leaves
were putting out.
He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly. The girl looked out
through the window, but she drew in again almost immediately, and all he heard
now was the sound of suppressed giggles.
He dug his bare toes into the mud of the roadside and felt his bitterness
within him like a burning pain.
That was all she had for him, then. After all that had gone before. She
make a mock of him with her cousin, because she was a teacher now. And not
even that, really. They called them pupil-teachers at the government school.
And he worked in the field. And so there was this great social gulf be-
tween them. When they had sat next to each other in the fifth form room at the
government elementary school it had not been so. It -ad been understood that
she was his girl.
Now there was this division, and only because his choice lay with the land,
and hers with a kind of career that led nowhere, that was nothing really. A pupil-
teacher in an elementary school.
And this girl cousin of hers from Kingston, she it was who made Myra
see it this way; thinking herself too good for him.
He threw the empty sack over his shoulder and took his machette in his
hand. He turned and walked stiffly down the road without looking back.
When he was round the bend and out of sight he stopped and looked
down at his bare feet, at his trousers rolled up to keep the dew off them, at his
forearms bare to the elbows with his shirt sleeves rolled up.
But he was not ashamed about anything. He was dressed as any working
peasant might have been. There was nothing to be ashamed of there. Instead he
knew resentment against her and all her kind who could see something unworthy
in all this.
A man's life lay all within the earth he loved. It was all he had. Him-
self the same and the equal of all those other dark-skinned peasants who owned
their land, or rented it, and grew their crops, and reared their livestock, and
were free men. In their inner understanding they recoenised this thine. and more,
they respected it alike within themselves, taking their pride of manhood there;
and in their fellowmen, holding them in equal esteem. Not to brag about with
the lips, but feeling it as something present, and recognisable, and real; that was
the bearing of a man.
He walked on feeling the dull edge of his resentment against her like the
stones under his feet.
He could get himself shoes if he cared to. Shoes to wear out into the field.
Others had done it. But till this day he had never felt the need of them, in the
sense that he lacked anything.
And so he came at last to the field that had been his father's and his
grandfather's before him.
The field lay in a fertile valley, and it filled him with pride to stand on
the roadside and look down upon it. The rows of yellow-yam vines climbing up
their sticks, and the sweet potato vines. The rows of bananas. The patch of coffee,
dark-green in the shade of their trees that were planted there before his grand-
father's time to protect them from the sun.
Someone was down there gathering wood. Who could it be? Very well,
he would learn whoever it was that he was not the soit of man to tolerate tres-
passers on his land.
He went down the track nimbly as a goat. Down there among the coffee
he was, whoever it might be. He crept closer, covering the ground silently as an
animal stalking his prey.
He stopped short suddenly and drew himself upright with an oath.
'God dam it. I thought it was ... What are you doing there?'
Miss Laura's Rhoda who never would stay in school. They said she was so
bad the old woman couldn't do anything with her.
He frowned down at her feeling that he ought to be angry, without quite
knowing why. The girl was as brash as they come. She just stood there grinning
up at him, not saying anything.
'Well, what do you want here?'
'I came for wood.'
'Wood.'
'To make a fire with.'
'What else would you be wanting it for but to make a fire with. Don't try
to be funny'.
She shrugged her shoulders, and still her gleaming white teeth showed
splendidly in their setting of ebony.
They said she was a bad girl, but no one ever ventured to say how bad.
or in what way. The idea just circulated around in an abstract sort of way. The
most anybody knew was the old woman couldn't manage her. Though why any-
one should want to manage another he didn't really understand.
She had run away from school because the teacher wanted to take the
strap to her. She had bitten his hand almost to the bone. And after that they
91
couldn't get her to go back to school again. She used to sing in the Baptist choir
and all, before that. But the school master was a deacon in the church, and on
that account she stopped going to church too.
'Now look here, you have no business here. You didn't ask me if you
could take away any wood from this place. Don't you know that's stealing?'
For answer she just put her head back and laughed right up at him. It was
rich, that laughter. Like the sap flowing up in those trees, answering the pull of
the sun.
He saw the round curve of her throat when her head went back like that,
as though she was hurling her laughter at him in the meaning of a challenge.
Not as Myra had laughed, secretly, with that cousin of hers behind the half-
drawn curtain.
Suddenly the anger went out of him, and he knew that he wanted to get at
something inside this girl, to understand her. To find out for himself what made
her do the things she did. Why she laughed at him when she ought to have been
at least contrite or at most angry. But instead laughed. He felt of a sudden
there was something here that he wanted to find out about for himself.
He came slowly down the slight incline and stood confronting her.
She watched him with quiet amusement, but withall a kind of wariness.
He felt it and it made him stop suddenly, arrested, with his intention as yet
unformed within his mind.
He felt about her as he had felt about the trees this morning, seeing their
colourful rich springing where the young leaves were putting out.
They stood facing each other across the little bundle of firewood that lay at
her feet, for the space of a few seconds, in which neither spoke a word. The
whole world became for that time as still as their own breathing. And it was as
though something passed between them, from eye to eye, from breast to breast:
something invisible, but real and with meaning, like the sap flowing in the trees.
It was she who broke the silence that had fallen upon them like a spell.
'All right,' she said, 'it's your wood, you can have it.' And she started to
walk away.
But he didn't want her to go, now. There was this upsurging resolve with-
in him to find out about her, what made her act the way she did. All that. He
wanted to call her, to beg her not to go. But somehow the words refused to shape
themselves upon his lips. His throat felt suddenly hot and dry.
He saw the curve of her thigh under her short dress as she thrust against
the steepness goin, up the hill. And the thought of her became fluid and flowed
through him like water.
She turned once and looked steadily at him, saw him standing there
gazing after her, with his jaw hanging open. But she didn't laugh now. And
she wasn't angry with him about the firewood either. She took all these things
with the same acceptance that she seemed to apply to everything, not asking
that they should be different, that people should act other than the way they did;
only wary, to be on her guard where she could, to defend herself how and when
she could, knowing herself virgin and whole, and a little apart from it all.
'So long, then,' she said with a gesture of her uplifted hand toward him.
And he answered her, awkwardly raising his hand; 'so long.'
He stood watching her until she was gone.
He dug his toes into the soft mud.
'By Christ,' he said, but without profanity.
He would take the wood up to the house after her. She would understand
by that he wasn't angry, understanding it as an overture of friendliness.
He would take wood up to the house every day, and sit and talk with the
old woman, once in a while.
But by the time he got to their house on the hill she had gone to the
village. The old woman was ailing. She didn't come out and talk with him. He
found the axe and chopped the wood and brought it into the kitchen.
Then he went slowly, thoughtfully back to his field again. But not to work.
He did not work at all that day.
He lay by the river and watched the yellow grains of sun in the sand
under his fingers. Scooping it up and pouring it out with his hand, and throwing
handfuls of it into the air.
He closed his eyes and saw the sap flowing up inside the trees.
He listened to the wind lifting and falling among the reeds and the sound
of it was like the earth itself breathing.
He saw the sunlight leaping back like fire from the eddies, of the river,
curling upward from the concave sides of the water; and the great boulders
squatting on their black haunches in green water up to their rumps; the curious
way the water circled round their amp'e forms, like fingers caressing, loath to
let go of them.
That evening, he returned late from his field. He was going by Myra's
house at the end of the village with the first of the stars.
He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly twice. But now
with a bravado that went jeering, taunting through the twilight; harsh against
the peaceful chirring of the crickets and the melancholy piping of the whistling
toads.
THE SYMPHONY OF MAZARUNI
by SHEIK M. SADEEK
In the days of great gold and diamond 'shouts' in the jungles of British
Guiana, the only means of travelling to these remote, and then untrodden areas
of our vast and wealthy hinterland, was a unique experience. For there was no
roadway, no air-line, and the forest then, impressed us as impenetrable.
Not quite all of us, I should say; for there were pork-knockers who were
nicknamed, because of their heroic deeds, undaunted and carefree dispositions;
'Sultan-of-Turkey', 'Tengar', 'Skybar', 'Ocean Shark' and so on.
I shall endeavour to give a vivid description of my initial journey from
Georgetown, the capital of this beautiful country, to Apaiqua, the stop before
the terminus Isseneru, hundreds of miles up the wealthy Mazaruni, a tributary
of the giant Essequibo, the most dangerous of Guiana's waterways.
The Stabroek Market's clock showed some minutes after six; when, be-
yond the boiling wake of water, the City began dwindling. Flanking the steamer
on her left until around ten-o'clock was the irregular growth of grey-green courida
trees, that fringe Guiana's coastlands. On her left muddy water lapped, and
further and yet further, Atlantic miles capped by white crests stretched until they
were lost in the misty blue of the horizon.
I knew not at what time we had started up the River Essequibo. Every-
thing seemed so muddled. But about eleven o'clock, and about an hour after we
had left Parika selling, I found myself looking at the Island that has a page in
Guiana's colourful history: The historical Fort Island, with the remains of the
old Dutch Fort 'Kyk-Over-Al'; a green fringe of wild cocoa trees in bloom on
which numerous iguanas were basking in tropical sunshine.
It was around three, when a shout went with the first sight of the flat.
mining town of Bartica lying like a stranded man at the water's edge; at the
junction of two great rivers; at the foot of a green hill.
We did not get passage up the River Mazaruni until the Friday, and dur-
ing that time we did what little shopping we had to do.
It was far from day-break when we left Bartica. On a dark beach a dim
lantern showed me a seat, and carefully I settled myself. Then, distinctly a gruff
voice shouted:
"You heard what the Cap'n says? Cap'n says 'In boat?' And you know
who is speaking, the Sultan-of-Turkey!"
And the motors of that oval-bottom bateau, with its gunwale not more
than eight or ten inches from the water, grumbled. And the powerful propellers
tumbled, leaving a boiling wake of phosphorescence in the darkness as the
laden vessel slid against the black ebb that blurred the distant lights of Bartica.
Once more darkness was broken by the shining ball that slowly emerged
from beyond the forest boughs. For the very first time I was really breathing the
sweet, fresh air of our jungle a jungle no less cunning; no less intriguing; no
less alluring than Edgar Rice Burroughs' captivating 'Edens of Africa.'
Slowly, as though with the sun, the boat began to take on life; until a
gaiety so rare, so strangely hilarious, filled the atmosphere.
Immediately, while mooring to camp that evening about 5.30, the men
like wild monkeys, sprang ashore with their hammocks in their hands in desper-
ate efforts to secure tie-places. I came out along with the captain and soon found
myself lost. The commotion was just too much for me.
"Aah! There's a good place." I said to myself, making for the opening
where a prospecting knife's blade bit deep into the hard wood. At the same time
a partner of mine shouted.
"Com-on with the rice, Son. The fire wastin'," Quickly, I slung my ham-
mock then grabbed the calabash gourd and dashed for the water to wash the
rice. When I returned my hammock was on the ground. I looked at the rope,
and it was cut, The knife was absent from the wood. I turned, and facing me
hard was the squatty and compact Sultan.
"Is that your hammock?" He growled.
"Ye-ye-yes, Sir" I stammered politely.
"Oh Me think was any Buxtonian's"' The anger in his tone had vanished
though his jaws remained firmly set.
Later that day, I got to know that Sultan was a native of Plaisance, a
neighboring village of Buxton, on the east coast of Demerara. And that pork-
knockers of these two villages never agreed. They were constantly trying to out-
wit each other.
That was the character I had heard so much about A character that
was rapidly becoming a legendary figure. Until deep into the night the form of
that broad-shouldered man, every inch a typical African kept dancing before
my eyes. The camp-fire was burning low. Beyond the fire a hammock creaked.
Yes, that's Tengar, I mused, jovial Tengar. There must be a way to get on with
Sultan, Tengar does, a murmur escaped my lips as I rolled over for God's good
sleep.
It was a hubbub early the following morning to me: The men, scrambling
and dashing, each with his own job hustling to be in time. The mist had not
cleared yet; a damp a depressing silence reigned throughout the whole forest.
Only the eternal falling of a fall was heard roaring in the distance, when again
that gruff, commanding voice repeated the captain's order as his broad, thick
palm slapped repeatedly his thick chest in stress of utterance:
"In boat! The Sultan-of-Turkey speaks."
Tengar took that day: Tall, broad and full-faced Tengar. His intelligent
look was not deceiving. He was the strong, country-type, West Indian Negro who
entertained us perfectly throughout our journey with his numerous bush-yarns
about 'Di-Dies' huge, ape-like monsters of the treacherous jungles; and 'Masa-
kurumans' legendary demons of the black waters. And at times he would swing
to such colourful subjects as: Fairies and Rainbows and flowers. Believe me he
was a rare type.
Pulling paddles and hauling the boat over the rapids to the lusty rhythms
of deep-throated shanties, one of which ran thus:
"Buxton gals ah wash dem bed -;
Wash dem beddin's;
Only when the rain come down -;
The rain come down.
Shanty maan!!! Oh, shanty m.....a......a......n!!"
was real fun. I felt wonderful.
Slowly, another day went by. From the men's reactions I knew it was a
typical day. But not for me: For never in my young life had I seen such magnifi-
cence. I watched, with an ever-growing glut for nature, and saw my country
break rugged and knew with each turn, each twist. Never had I dreamt of such
misty headlines; of those hazy, blue-capped mountains that ranged one beyond
the other to the far end of the earth.
Gazing around me, while the boat vibrated to the strain of the engine, I
saw a forest so green that its colour looked fictitious. Flowers of different hues,
even gold, played on the trunks of giant moras, greenhearts and other timber
trees; or waved mid-air on vines, or even trailed in the black water where a
musty smell mingled with their heavy sweetness.
It was yet early when again we camped. But we had to, for it was at the
foot of Tobouku, the great waterfall before Apaiqua.
Another morning From behind the towering, foggy summits the fickle
sun peeped mockingly, piercing the dew drops as tho' hate that only enhanced
the beauty of this scenic country. Before tropic mist had retreated, those ram-
stams those vigorous ruffians of the gold and diamond 'diggins' were already
stretching their ropey muscles knee-high, waist-high, even chest-high in the
roaring waters of the fall on the boat-lines. Their broad flat feet with claw-like
toes, panted with death-like grips on the rip-rap of Tobouku's jaws.
In that struggle for life, someone called aloud in a voice, commanding,
yet imploring, as though Venus and Hercules were at war:
"Shantie ma......a......a.....n!! Shan............" The voice was muffled. A stifled
scream followed. The man kept rolling over death like a battered buoy pressed
against the boiling current; tacked to life by two weakened hands, getting weaker
and weaker under its unique ordeal:
"H.....ee......lp!" The voice was lost as worn fingers refused to grip life,
that was a bubble. We only glanced at Cuffy. What else could we have done
without sharing his fate? He went off like an ant milling in a late stream.
We were more than half-way up the fall, and it was around nine a.m.
"Keep it up, Fred." The captain shouted to the bowman. At that very
instant, Fred had eased his paddle to refresh his hold. In a split-second the boat
had swerved broadside, sweeping us. Quickly she flooded, rolled a little, then
the under-current took charge as light cargoes went express. In a matter of
seconds everything was reduced to scattered chunks of wreckage; momentarily
visible amid the froth, or rolling upon rocks covered with green, grey or black
mosses, pointing jagged ends to the sky; leaving the men, bubbling shouts and
screams in the foaming jaws of the master-criminal Tobouku.
A few seconds after I had lost footing I found myself dashed on a rock.
About ten yards from me, was Sultan on another rock.
One after the other the drowning souls passed-passed in thundering foams
and churning foams. In hissing crests which the rocks and wind shattered into
shimmering, cascading sprays.
Then one man came passing very near to Sultan. Not that I had expected
him to stretch his hand to the man, for even a madman wouldn't risk such a
thing in Tobouku. But I did expect him to be a bit serious towards precious
life at such a time and place. Imagine hearing these words coming clearly, majes-
tically above the roar of the thunderous fall.
"Passeth thy way, Padna, from mortality to eternity; For if the Lord had
wanted thee to be saved, he would have provided a rock for thee as he hath pro-
vided one for me," and slapping his hairy chest in emphasis, concluded, "The
Sultan-of-Turkey."
Surely, the drowning man did not hear a single word of what he said and
Sultan did not care either; for he was that kind of character was never really
serious towards life. He believed in destiny; so everything was fun everything.
Under the blistering sun, for nearly two hours we remained on the rocks
while the angry waters tumbled and splashed around us.
It was about one o'clock when the throbbing of an engine was heard as
its boat crawled inch after inch up the rocky rapids. Then they flung lines for
us, and thus we were rescued. In the boat were seven other survivors of our boat.
The rest had suffered the horrible fate in the black waters of Mazaruni. The
next day we reached Apaiqua. And the first thing I did was to write home. For 1
knew news of the washing-away wouldn't take long to reach Bartica.
And, as I started to write the letter, as when I started to write this,
the faint music of a new-born symphony began like an autumn leaf it floated
down through the still, jungle air to rest on a dormant pool, Gradually, the pool
took on life. Gradually, it increaesd, holding Autumn in a whirlpool and I wasn't
my own self. Soon unconsciously, I was writing a travelogue I was reliving
the most thrilling, the most eventful chapter of my life.
It was a symphony of quaint old Georgetown: The determination of a
fearless youth after a fortune of gold or diamonds. It was a page of Guiana's
colourful history, and fear on a dark beach. It was the grumbling of motors and
the tumbling of propellers.
It was the breathing of the sweet, fresh air of a cunning, an intriguing, an
alluring jungle. It was the hilarity of a rare gaiety.
It was the chattering of monkeys, the creaking of hammocks, the com-
motion of a mining camp in a bedewed and misty morning. It was the pulling of
paddles to the lusty rhythms of deep-throated shanties. It was the many colours.
the many awe-inspiring things of a tropical jungle.
It was the screeching of parakeets and macaws. It was toucans on turu
palms and iguanas basking in the sun.
It was the struggle for life in the tumbling, the roaring, the falling, the
splashing, the the hissing, the black, hostile waters of the water-falls. It was man,
with an unmatched, ruthless sense-of-humour.
It was life resurrected to live in a jungle endowed with the calls, spells
and charms needed to hold captive all those who dared enter it.
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APRIL 1986 POETRY THE GOLDEN Anthology of Selections From: Nos.l Nos. 33 6' 34 E. K Brathwaite, George Campbell Owe n Campbell Jan Carew, Martin Carter Aime Cesaire Frank Collym o r e G e o r ges Desportes Oswald Durand, Wilson Harris, Roy Heath Cecil H er be rt, E. McG. Keane George Lamming, Walter Mac A Lawrence Etienne L e ro Leo (Egbert Roger Mais, Hilda McDonald, Ian McDonald, Edwina Melville Edgar Mittelholzer, Jean Joseph Rabe arivelo E. M Roach, W Adolphe Roberts, Leopold Sedar Senghor A J Seymour, Philip Sherlock, M, G, Sm i th. Harold M Telemaque, H. A. Vaughan Derek Walcott, Daniel Williams, Milton Williams. FICTION, TRAVELOGUE, HISTORY P. H Daly, Vere T Daly Celeste D o lphi'n, W i lson Harris Roger Mais, Sheik Sadeek ARTICLES AND REVIEWS Joy Allsopp, E. R. Burrowes, Lilian D ewar, Edna Manley, Edgar Mittelholzer, A J. Seymour, D A. Westmaas De n is Williams, Fred Wilmot, Allan Young. ------.., + B.=l.'O .:5
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FRIENDS OF KYKOVERAL The reappearance and continuation of Kyk-over-AI could not pos sibly have been achieved without the support of a large number I)f people and organisations in the community. We are mo r e than grateful to those who have so readily and vigorously supported this effort to keep alive an important part of cultural tradition. We owe a speCial debt of gratitude to the fol/owing for their support of this Golden Kylk-over-AI Issue. ORGANISATIONS: Associated Industries Limited; Autoprint Limited (Leyland Thompson and John W. Lee); Banks D.I.H1 ; Bauxite Industry Development Company; Caribbean Molasses Company; C. & F.; Central Garage; Edward Beharry &. C(0mpany; Airways Corporation; G.N.T.C.; Guyana Stores. Houseprl!)ud; Insurance Brokers-Guyana Limited; Ricks &. Sari; Rotary Club of Georgetown; University of Guyaha Library. INDIVIDUALS: Maurice Amres, Lloyd Austin, Joel Benjamin, Hayden Blade!s, Neville Chin, Bernard Crawford, Frank D' Almada, David de Caires, Leon Dundas, Harry Dyett, Bridget Evelyn, Fitzpatrick, Vernon Fortune, Billy Fung-A-IFat, J. D. Gornes, Hyett M. Haniff, Faith Harding, Wendy Jackson, George Jaikaran, Tony Jekir, David King, Joey King, Bud Lee, Victor and Madellon Lopes, Gem Madhoo. John Massingharn, Wainwright McKenzie, Stanley Moore. J Louis Narine. Kit and Elayne Nascimento, Ray Newham, Bryn Pollard, Magda. Pollard. Shorab Rahaman, Roderick Rainford, Jerrick Raysid'e, Clifford Reis. Ron Robinson, Olive Sahai (Cave Hill, Barbados), Joyce Sinclair, Steve Surujbally, I=rank Thomas;s(1n (U.K.), George Walcott. Supporting KYK-OVER-AL Guyana's literary magazUJ.e" Editors: A. J. SEYMOUR and IANtvJcOONALD
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Nbs. 33 and 34Eillted by A. J SEYMOUR /lind IAN McDONALD T H E GOLDEN KYK JNTRODUcnON :,,-, literature in the Making : -A. J. Seymour .A3saying for a GOLDEN KYK Jan POETRY:E. K. BRATIfWAITHE: Piano ; The BJu ; SO'1O' for Trumpet; Interlude for Alto Saxophone (No. 27. 1 60). GEORGE CAMPBELL: Holy; History Makers; Worker (No 22. 1957). ...,y 15 OWEN CAMPBELL, : TIle Washerwomen (No. 22, 1957) : ...... 16 JAN CAREW: Manarabisi (No. 19, 1954) 17 MARTIN CARTER: Bare Night 'Mthout Comfort; Who Walk s a Pavement; The Kind Eagle; A:l1 of a Man; The Discovery of Companion (No 15. 1952) ; Death of a Slave (No. 14, 1952) ; Thrcc Poems of Shape an d Sequence (No. 20, 1955); The Univemtyof Hunger (No. 17. 1953): 18 FRANK OOLLYMORE: H y mn to the Sea (No 14,1952) .... 27 OSWALD DURAND: Choucoune (No 16. 1953). 28 Wn..sON HARRIS: Agamemnon (No. 15. 1952); Death of Hector; The Stone o f the Sea; Charcoal; Troy (No. 22. 1957) 30 ROY HEATH : ..... The Peasants (No. 17. 1953). 35 CECIL HERBERT: Song; And the Pouis Sing (No. 22. 1957) . 36 E. MeG. KEANE: To ... (No. 14, 1952); My Love Are You StrOlng (N 22, 1957) 37 ETIENNE LERO: He Left Today (No 15. 1952). 38 JEAN JOSEPH RABEARlVELO: Poem (No. 16, 1953), 39 GEORGES DESPORTES : We Have Abandoned (No. 15.1952) 39 LEOPOLD SEDARSENGHOR: And We Shall Bathe (No 15, 1952); The Hurricane (No. 16, 1963). 40 AlME CESAJRE : Sun Serpent (No. 15, 1952) The Wheel (No. 26. 1959). 41 GEORGE LAMMING: Swans; Birthday Poem FOT Clifford Sealy (No, 14, 1952). 42 LEO (EGBERT MARTIN): The Swallow (No .5. 1947); Themes ot Song; TwUight (No. 19, 1954). 45 WALTER MacA LAWRENCE: Kaaeteur (No. 19. 1954). 47 ROOER MArS : I, Shall Wait fOl
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HILDA-McDONALD : Evensong (No 14, 1952) ..... 49 IAN McDONALD: Pineapple Woman; Son Asleep-Aged Six Months (No. 28, 1961). 49 BASIL McFARLANE: Poem; Jacob and the Angel (No 14,1952). 51 EDWINA MELVILLE: POem '(No.' 17, 1953). 52 EDGAR MI1TELHOLZER: Meditwtions of a Man Slightly Drunk (No. 20, 1955) . .' 53" E. M. ROACH: To My Mother; I am the Archipelago; Home' ':, stead; Poem (No. 22 1957) . 53 W. ADOLPHE ROBERTS: On a Monument to Marti (No. '.' .r . 22, 1957). . 57 A. J SEYMOUR : SUD is a Shapely Fire (No. 14, 1952); There Runs a Dream (No. 19, 1954); Name Poem (No.2, 1946); Tomorrow Belongs to the People (No. 3, 1946). ...... PHILIP M. SHERLOCK:' Pocomania (No. 14, 1952) : 58 62 M. G. SMITH: Mellow Oboe (No. 14, 1952). 63 HAROLD M. TELEMAQUE: Roots; Poem (No. 14, 1952) ......... : 64 H. A. VAUGHAN: Dark Voices; Revdation (No. 14, i952) ... : ... > . 66 DEREK' W ALCOTT: The YelJc.w Cenietery; A city'S De!lJth by. '" Fire (No. 14 1952); As John to Patin o s (No. 22 ; 1957) ;'.':-:. :.:' 66 DANIEL WILLIAMS: Over Here (No. 22, 1957). . 70 MILTON WILLIAMS: Oh! Prahalad Dedicated Day; Pray for Rain (No. 23, 1958). 71 FICTION, TRA VEWGUE, mSTORY !P H. DALY: Christmas in the Ninteen-Twenties (No. 21, 1955) .. :, 73 VERE T. DALY: The Story of Kykoveral (Nb 1,1945). ...... CELESTE DOLPHIN: Waramurie (No.6, 1948). WILSON HARRIS: Fences Upon the Earth (No.4, 1947). ROGER MAIS: The Springing (No. 20, 1955). .. SHEIK M SADEEK: The Symphony of Mazaruni 12, 1952). ARTICLES AND REVIEWS:JOY ALLSOPP: Philip P.ilgrim's Legend of Kaieteur(No. 20 1955) E. R. BURROWES: Old Wine in New Win eskins (No.8, 1949) LILIAN DEWAR: Sim e y on Eduoation (No.7, 1948) EDNA MANLEY: Art in the We st Indies (No.5, 1947). EDGAR MITTELHOLZER: Literary Criticism and the Creati ve Writer (No 15, 1952). A. J SEYMOUR : The Books of Guiana (No. 27, 1960). D A. WESTMAAS: On Writing Creolese (No.7, 1948). DENIS WILLIAMS: Guliana Today (No. 9,1949). FRED WILMOT: Roger Mais (No. 20, 1955). ALLAN YOUNG: On Writing History -An Administrative View (No. 23, 1958). BIQGRAPIDCAL NOTES' .. .' I 78 83 86 90 94 99 101 104 108 116 120 128 131 134 139 143
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LITERATURE IN THE MAKING -THE CONTRIBUTION OF KYKOVERAL by ARTHUR J. SEYMOUR The biography of a magazine includes the consideration of the part it played in the making of a national literature which is still incomplete altilOugb it has some considerable body First the basic narrative. KYK started in 1945 as tbe organ of the Britisb Guiana Writers Association, and gradually assumed the responsibility for printing tbe more important lectures and discussions of tbe Britisb Guiana Union of Cultural Clubs. This was possible because the editor was also the honorary secretary of the Union of Clubs. Then the Writers Association ceased to meet, and later the Union of Cultural Oubs fell apart, leaving the editor to pursue tbe development of the magazine without clients of any sort. The editor was himself at first staff member and then tbe head of the Government Information Services and therefore committed to providing facts and information to all. He was bimself a poet and looking back it appears that without his being very conscious of it, be was seeking to make a distinction in his poetry of a public voice and a private voice So here is tbe editor as a primary resource. A word now about the function of a Little Review or literary magazine since this type of magazine bas a bistory of its own. The little review is important in the world of literature and particularly in the English language as a contemporary record of trends in new writing. that would otherwise receive little attention. In the 1945 Uttle Reviews Anthology, tbe Englisb poet-e
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There was also a special type of little review which developed the book anthology or book magazine. These looked like magazines but were books. Men and women in the British Military Services brought out anthologies -Bugle Blast, Khaki and Blue, and Air Force Poetry. The same was true of short stories, published in little review collections Looking back after many years, the editor was only vaguely conscious of some of these events, in England, a faraway centre of Empire. The editor was only vaguely conscious also of many of the social forces operating in Guyana in the 1940's although looking back, it is evident what had taken place. In the first place, national health had become much better; it was in 1946, at the end of the war that Dr. Giglioli and D.D.T. had come together to break the scourge of malaria, and people no longer had to suffer from crippling fevers. There was new American money coming into the country from the construction of the Air Base at Atkinson and at the Naval Base at Makouria People were eating more meat so the diet had improved. Harold Stannard had come to Guyana and encouraged intellectual curiosity and had put creative intell i gences in touch with one another in the Caribbean region especially with Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica. The Union of Cultural Clubs that he had encouraged was focus attention on the development of the arts and the discussion of cultural values in a planned deliberate and sustained fashion. This meant a gathering of interest and support that unified the native elite in the country, and a possible leadership in the country was corning into existence to discuss the intellectual material written by their peers. By chance there were at least three poets important by national standards who had begun to write in Guyana and to maintain a fellowship of poetic and critical imagination in the 1940's At the end of the war, there were suddenly available good inexpensive paperback books in the Penguin Series, making a revolution at that time in reading in England and America So the community was open to influences from abroad in a liberal way. Linkages with groups in the West Indies began to appear with the little review Focus in Jamaica edited by Edna Manley, with Bim in Barbados edited by Frank Collymore and Therold Barnes. There were also deeper social forces at work, now that one can look back and analyse In the small community of likeminded people, a strong contact was being forged between the magazine and the society, and a shape, a character of being Guyanese was being given to the society. The free play of mind upon ideas helped a blossoming of what we call literature, and the description of areas of cultural values and an inventory of the condition of the arts helped the focussing of common concern and openness to ideas. The symposia (many of them came later rather than earlier in the biography of the magazine) encouraged progressive thinking, even though contributors held diverse views in social and religious matters. But the very clash was important. In this creation of a literary and intellectual leadership, there was an unconscious groping towards a position in which the community wanted to 4
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maintain the tradition mediated from England to the British West Indies by our colonial past and to see how it could be married to all the cultural elements in the community that were quickening to birth. We did not have a name for it then, but it was what is called the process of cultural pluralism and national unity. What was this tradition that we inherited? It was part of the European heritage leading back to the Greeks, the Romans and the Hebrews, and came as part of our educational patrimony. With the English language ca,me standards in literature and criticism. We laid great store by this legacy and consciousness, and we wanted it included in the new Guyana to be born, since we would continue to use the English language. The question in our minds perhaps un asked, was how we could take this old colonial world and remake it into our own nation. We were conscious also that many of our members had religions and therefore cultural values based upon their links with India and others on links with Africa. We asked the question what is there in our past as Guyanese to which we could give common pride? What were the things that united us rather than the things that divided us? We wanted to move away from this old world to make a new world The old world was still alive and the new world was not yet born. We were not without some roots. There were the Dutch historical past, the mythologically valuable Amerindian present, and in some vague way all of us felt that we could somehow claim those roots and bring them into literary and cultural production. Vaguely too, we felt that linkages with the West Indies and others there thinking like ourselves would help to make this new world be realised Remember that the editor is speaking from a web of reflection and memory that looks backwards to see the roads travelled by thinking and arti culate people in Guyana over the past 40 years We did not know it then, but we were placing an intellectual and cultural apex on the traditional colonial pyramid. There was no university, but the University Colleg e of the West Indies, especially through its Extra Mural Department. was beginning to make its influence felt in Guyana It was the inner necessity and urge to freedom that we were paying attention to. So we focussed on the human condition in Guyana, the here and now of our world. The value of a magazine like Kyk lies not in its age, but its purpose. The responsibility and duty of a third world magazine is to name the here and now, to summon up the values of the past that are embedded in the soil and its history, and to point to the future from today's discernible trends One aspect of the urge to freedom is the ability to choose from among several possibilities. An editor can request the prose writings to put in his pages and they will be the fruit of the conscious mind but we must remember that the poetry he prints is the expression of what is secret and internal, since the age is about to make its statements and announce its values through the poets 5
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Early in its pages in 1945 and 1948, Kyk declared its aims "an instru ment to help forge a Guyanese people, make them conscious of their intellectual and spiritual possibilities build some achievement of common pride in the literary world make an act of possession of our environment. .. We so desperately want to be rooted in the European soil, that is the only earth avail able ... the accident of forced immigration into the Caribbean has isolated us to the impact of a dying civilization so that we can pass on some flaming torch higher up the line." L. E. Brathwaite reviewing Kyk in 1966 against these aims felt that the magazine had not been radical or revolutionary enough, that there had not been enough analyses. He however observed that then there had been disagreement with the editor's concept and point of view. He notes the magazine moves from a purely Guyanese to a West Indian position wit h the setting up of the University College of the West Indies, and became aware towards the end, of the importance of African Culture in the region. He saw as valuable the translated poems of French West Indian and African poets and the special issues on West Indian Literature, Pen Portraits o f important West Indians, anthologies of Guyanese and West Indian poetry, the Cities of the Caribbean, Guyanese Christmas, the Theatre in British Guiana and the Artist in Society. He felt that the poetry of the main Guyanese poets and the introduction of a radical and critical element were valuable I wish to add certain personal points of view. There were many problems facing the Editor of Kykoveral. Appointed by his peers in the Writers' Associa tion to take charge of the magazine. he had to conduct the business of the pub lication in accordance with the agreed aims and with his own standards of excellence developing these as he went along, following his vision of the future in the formulation of his plans for successive issues, weighing the ability and the willingness of his possible contributors, expressing the spirit of the contents in his leading articles, gauging the relationship between the periodical and his developing audiences at home and abroad, moving out from a limited Guyanese writing core to the wider regional contribution and discussion of ideas by fellow writers of quality in the West Indies, making possible the circulation of these ideas while they were still fresh, articulating always as best he could the spirit of the times in thought and sensibility, and with growing support and confidence playing a creative part in the literary, intellectual and cultural growth of the country and the region. As this development of editorial philosophy took place other problems arose As noted already, the British Guiana Writers' Association ceased to exist; then the British Guiana Union of Cultural Clubs ceased to meet. As 1 became the editor of a magazine without bases, my own responsibilities as a Senior Civil Servant deepened. various difficulties arose in securing advertise ments. the climate of opinion among the ablest minds in the country changed imperceptibly from tolerance to internal divisions and to commitments and pre possessions on the political scene, in the region the Federation of the West Indies began to falter and fail in its stride, horizons everywhere began to narrow and 6
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there was a gradual closing of mental frontiers to the circulation and influence of those ideas of breath and richness of which I had been a champion. I feel sure that there always exists a regional fraternity of men of letters within the Carib bean indeed I was to experience contact with that fraternity during my years with the Caribbean Organisation and to sample this curiosity and openness of mind to new ideas without hostility but with the beginning of the 1960's it was clear that national loyalties and differences of political philosophy were affecting the existence of periodicals such as Kykoveral. There is a special relationship between a magazine and an editor. In Australia, for example, the critic H. M. Green, pointed out that over the period 1900-1950 in three instances, The Bookfellow edited by Stephens, The Lone Hand by Archibald and the little review The Triad dealing with literary, artistic and musical matters which migrated from New Zealand to Australia, these maga zines were kept alive only by the vision and perseverance of the editors. This would be true also of Kyk. Contributors had to be coaxed, cajoled, and reminded in many instances, and they still did not produce the promised contribution, in which case the editor has to decide whether or not he will write the piece himself so that the magazine will come out as planned. The relationship eventually can become that of an anxious mother and a child. So in 1962 when the editor moved from Guyana to Puerto Rico as a political casualty, the magazine went to sleep. Since 1945 there has been a great change in the climate of literary opinion and in Guyana and the West Indies talents that had been active in the 1940's had moved into politics. There was that disillusionment also in the wake of the breakup of the West Indian Federation Who had been the main readers and supporters of Kyk in its 17 years of existence? Writers themselves, the middle class, middle-brow people in the city like clergymen, teachers, doctors, musicians, lawyers, merchants and clerks The contributors had been involved in a number of symposia on themes like the spirit of man, the responsibility of the artist to the community, remembrances of Christmas from the view-points of living in London, New York, 1amaica; the arts in Guyana, children and their values, is there a West Indian way of life, greatness and bitterness, standards of criticism and several on reading meaning into a poem. These brought readers into involvement and made them into con tributors. There was a strong section on book reviews Books that could make any contribution to the Guyanese way of life were made the subject of reviews and t.here was a wide net of persons who responded with a personal reaction to the books which found a place in the magazine. Some years ago, a German Literature student prepared an index to Kykoveral over the period 1945-1961 under eight sections Fiction, Drama, Poetry, articles on literature and language, articles on history and culture. Mis cellaneous articles, Symposia Colloquia. and editorial notes. It was published in the magazine World Literature Written in English, Nov. 1917. The Editor went through the pages. 40 in all and realised that this was the distillation of several 7
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years of his creative life. The 16 pages of the names of poets and poems, epito. mised his relationships with many men and women, some of whom he had never seen. For example, it was a letter from Miriam Koshland in California that brought translations of the poetry of Senghor Cesaire Lero and Rabearivelo. Meeting Philip Sherlock, Clare McFarlane and his sons in Jamaica brought an input of Jamaican poets. The St. Vincent star soloists, Keane, Campbell and Williams Telemaque of Trinidad, E. M. Roach from Tobago, Derek Walcott from St. Lucia, Frank Collymore and H. A. Vaughn and later Eddie Brathwaite from Barbados all had sent poems to Kyk, but always Wilson Harris and Martin Carter could be relied upon to send in poems to be printed. As I looked at the Index I realised that Kykoveral is a prism of silver crystal which has attracted and held g lowing images and ideas from more than 150 contributors over 17 years and mingled th e m into a jewel of memory of indescribable richness, now flashing in radiant light and now colours of heaving and seething blue and green and yellow for the delight and development of thousands of its readers. It's lovely to know that this jewel was once in my hand. FOR KYKOVERAL Here in my hands I hold This happy jewel These glowing dreams I forged In a hard school Visions and memories Their blessings radiate And many a blessing more On new eyes wait. My life s blood others too This jewel holds Transformed and caught in words Glinting with gold And when with dust my eyes Finally close Still with our happiness This jewel glows Based on an offprint from the Guyana Library Association Bulletin. vol. 9, No.2, 1980. 8
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ASSAYING FOR A GOLDEN KYK by IAN McOONALD Helping to choose what should go into this issue of a K:yk:' I thought might be a time-consuming chore. It turned out to be a tlme-ennching experience. The first good thing I did was decide to read right through all 28 issues of the old series of Kyk produced between December 1945 when No. 1 appeared and December 1961. I might have done it differently and cut corners by con centrating attention for the most part on the well-known Kyk anthologies: of Guyanese poetry (No. 19) and of West Indian poetry (No 14 and No. 22). These, after all would contain ore sifted and refined by experts to a purity already worthy for a "Golden Kyk". All that might then be necessary would be to anthologise the anthologies. It is a good thing for me that I didn t pursue that slightly dishonest course. By reading through all 28 issues I came across countless items that first held my attention, then captured my interest, and ended up considerably widening and deepening my education. I intended spending not much more than a few hours speed-reading through these old magazines in order to get an instant overview of what appeared to me the best things so that I could make a list which I could then check against the magisterial opinion of AJS, editor ever since the creation of Kyk and still going strong. Instead I spent many, many swiftly passing hours reading right through poems, stories and articles most of which might not be candidates for "Gold" but which were an the same fascinating in their own right. Indeed the material so intrigued me that I found myself putting down even Isabel Allende's great novel "The House of the Spirits", which I had just been given as a special treasure in order to concentrate on this marvellous old Kyk stuff still SO full of life and lessons A complete sampler of the instruction and pleasure I derived would stretch for pages. It would certainly include all of Wilson Harris's long-ago poems which distinguished many early Kyks. I don't know to what extent Wilson, in these days of his special fame as a novelist of deep and complex significance would acknowledge these poems as anything more than apprentice work but they certainly delighted me. Then, quite apart from his poetry, there were the articles, editorials and reviews, issue after issue, by AJS on scores of different cultural themes and personalities These would themselves make up a valu able anthology if they were collected and published. Sometimes the briefest of notices like Vincent Roth's "Six Most Outstanding Men in British Guiana's History" whetted the appetite for much more. Very often a line or two from a long forgotten poem sparkled a small fire in tbe beart. Personalities from the past I hardly knew about came to life: Harold Stannard, for instance, a B.ritish Council man who comes through the years as a wonderfully "complete humanist" in the collection of tributes to him in Kyk No.6. There was a series of vignettes on Caribbean capital cities 33 years ago which are fascina ting to read today and made me think how interesting it would be to have a new 9
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series written for a new generation. Issue No. 23 (June 1959) was devoted entirely to the theatre. It brought special delight and gave impetus to the idea of preparing an up-to-date issue on the theatrical scene in Guyana today. With a start of pleased recognition I came across in Kyk No. 24 (June 1958) extract from an early version of my own novel "The Hummingbird Tree" which was finally published in 1970. How swiftly time passes before concept becomes conclusion if it ever does! Even the advertisements in the old issues I found had nostalgic value as they extolled the merits of Ferrol Compound ("Conquer That Obstinate Cough"), the Portuguese Mutual Pawnbroking Company, Bookers Hardware, the Argosy, and Raleigh the All-Steel Bicycle. And I noted with amazement the price of a copy of Kyk in 1950. One shilling! Eighty times cheaper, I regret to say, than the price of today's product in our inflation-riddled economy! Time and time again I found myself putting down an old Kyk and think ing how much I wished others could read what I had just read with such pleasure and interest. In December 1961, there was, as just one instance, a won derful and still completely relevant exchange of views on "Children and Values in a Changing Society" in which I found a quotation from the Talmud I did not know but shall now take care to remember: "Limit not thy children to your own ideas; they are born in a different time." In issue after issue there were phrases, ideas, insights, and creations which provoked and pleased. Kyk 15 I found to be a classic in the series poem-sequences by Martin Carter and Wilson Harris, extract from a novel by Jan Carew, pen portrait of C. L. R. James, a wonderful article by Edgar Mittleholzer, translations by Miriam Koshland of four black French poets which were a revelation, and a score more poems and reviews to add to a magnificent collection It was so good I had the im mediate feeling that all that was needed was to reissue this number and the search for a "Golden Kyk" would be over. Having completed the chore, which had turned into a real pleasure and become closely acquainted with all 28 issues of the old Kyk, I was sure there would be quite enough material to produce not one but a number of "Golden Kyks" of equal interest and merit. But the task remained to compress that much of value into a single volume of 128 pages How to set about such a task? A lot of it must be done through instinctive reaction to individual poems and articles as you are reading This provides a still formidably long list from which a further a s say must be made At this point, and probably earlier, certain guidelines or principles of selection form in the mind. It may be useful to identify these as they occured to AJS and myself not in any particular order of priority One. Quality, of course The poem or piece must not merely be interest ing or historically valuable or culturally exotic. It must be well written, it must have literary merit. Two. There must be category-spread. A "Golden Kyk would have to contain not only poems (perhaps Kyk's greatest strength) but also fiction, 10
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literary and other reviews, and articles with a reasonably wide time and subject span of cultural developments. Three. There would have to' be some mix of the famous and the for gotten. Kyk contributors who are currently celebrated writers like Wilson Harris, Derek Walcott Martin Carter, Eddie Hrathwaite must surely be substantially included on merit alone. Yet an honoured place must also be found for stalwarts of the past who might be in danger of sinking undeservedly into obscurity. Four. There should be some indication of Kyk's seminal role not only in providing an outlet for Caribbean writers, especially poets, but also in helping to form and further a new cultural consciousness in the region. Five. TO' some extent pure sentiment, if you like to call it that, would have to' carry the day. It wou l d be impossible, for in s tance, not to include some thing from Kyk Volume I Number 1. Again, however he might protest, a place of eminence would always have to be found in a "Golden Kyk" for the work of the chief begetter of the whole enterprise, AJS himself. Readers will have to judge the result of trying to apply these guidelines as faithfully as pcssible. It has certainly not been possible to accomplish all that such principles might imply could ideally be achieved. Many marvellous pieces have had to be omitted. People whO' have made great contributions to the Kyk series have been short.changed and in some cases entirely neglected. For instance, there is not even one piece by Ncrman Cameron one of the stalwart Kyk contributors on a variety of subjects in the 1940's and 1950's. I personally am dismayed that not one poem or short story by Jacqueline de Weever, once and still an excellent contributor has found its way into this collection. A. N. Forde, Ivan Van Sertima and J. E. Clare McFarlane are others who are sadly, missing. And there really isn't enough from Edgar Mittleholzer, who was a regular con tributor in the early days, or from Adolphe Roberts of Jamaica, to name just two Certain cultural aspects-art, mu sic, theatre folklore, history-abundantly covered in Kyk over the years do not find the sort of place they deserve. There is nothing here, for instance from the i s sue, No. 25, devoted entirely to theatre. Nor has anything been included from the extraordinary issue No. 10 (April 1950) when single.handedly the editor. A. J. Seymour, undertook a "summary survey of writing in the West Indies". Any abstract from this issue would either be too short to do justice to the whole or would have monopolised too much space if justice were to be done. This was often a dilemma. One would have Icved, for instance to include Richard AUsopp's series of articles entitled "The Language We Speak" but they were much tcc long to fit in and one was therefcte simply left thinking, not for the first or last time, whether or when we will ever see his completed magnum cpus on the subject. There are many, many other regrets. I had a particular admiration for the 1951 Harold Stannard Memcrial lecture by AJS on "The Creation of Quality in 11
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the West Indies", but it is not here. It is worth reissuing as a pamphlet on its own. I would have loved to include all of Wilson Harris's fourteen poems in a cycle entitled "The Sun" but only some of it has slipped in. Almost above all there are the lovely wood-engravings by E. R. Burrowes which appeared in many Kyks in the early days but which it has not proved possible to reproduce satisfactorily though they thoroughly deserve to be in this "Golden Kyk". It proved necessary at the last moment, for want of space, to make some hard choices As a result of this final assay M. G. Smith's beautiful poem "Madonna and Child" and Wilson Harris's powerful sequence "The Fabulous Well" both had to be omitted. With heavy hearts we also omitted at the last gasp correspondence exchange between AJS, W. H. L. Allsopp, and Leo Small on the calypso, a concise and perceptive profile of C. L. R. James by Canon J. D. Ramkeeson, and a critical appraisal of the paintings of Denis Williams by Wilson Harris. So much w.as discovered, so much had to be set aside. Seemingly glaring omissions are inevitable when material enough fOr an article on writing history by Allen Young that badly needed reprinting. So a couple of full-length books has to be reduced sufficiently to cram into about 120 pages. In the end, of course, what happens is that "instinct", "feel", again takes over and is the final influence on what goes in. To that large extent this "Golden Kyk" is very much a personal choice and not a carefully balanced academic exercise. Even with the final choices made and the material at the printers one had bad dreams that some great and obvious treasure from these past issues might have passed unnoticed through our judgements' careful sieve. We are reconciled to receiving a number of letters beginning "How could you have forgotten ... ............... ?" To many of these we will have to respond I am sure with a rueful nod and smile of recognition. Finally, I must recall again the pure pleasure this work of delving into past Kyks has given me The magazine merits its "Golden" issue and it deserves much more. Some day, when Guyanese or regional institutions can afford it, the whole series of early Kyks, 1945 to 1961, should be reissued for the benefit of scholars, for the interest of those who love West Indian literature, and for the pleasure and information of the ordinary reader. J2
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POETRY EDWARD KAMAU BRATHWAITE PIANO Hunched. hump-backed. gigantic. The pianist presides above the Rumpus. His fingers clutch the chords Dissonance and discord vie and vamp across the key Board. His big feet beat the beat until the Whole joint rocks. It is not romantic. But a subtle fingering exudes a sweet exotic Odour, now and then; you'll Recognize the fragance if you listen well This flower blooms and blossoms unTil brash boogie-woogie hordes come bourgeoning up from hell Blind and gigantic THE BLUES She's dark and her voice sings Of the dark river. Her eye s Hold the soft fire that only the warm Night knows. Her skin is musky and soft. She travels far back. explores Ruins touches on old immemorial dreams Everyone but herself had forgottep. She Becomes warrior and queen and keeper of th e Tribe There is no fear Where she walks. although drums speak To announce the terrible death of a tyrant And although her song is sad, there is no sorrow Where she sings She walks in a world Where the river whispers of certainties That only she can acknowledge The Trees Touch confident and unassuming. She hopes That light will break in the clearing Before her song ends 13
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SOLO FOR TRUMPET He grows dizzy With altitude The sun blares He hears Only the bras s Of his own mood If he could fly He would be An eagle. He would see How the land lies Softly in contour s How the fiel ds lie Striped, how the Hous e s fit into the valleys. He would see cloud lying On water; moving like the Hulls of great ships Over the land But he is only a Cock. He sees Nothing Cares Nothing. He reaches to the sky With his eyes closed His neck bulging. His ambition Plummets through the sunlight Like a shining stone. INTERLUDE FOR ALTO SAXOPHONE Propped a g ain s t the crowded bar He pours into the curved and silver hom His o ld unhappy longing for a home The dancers twist and tum He le ans and wishes he could bum His memories to a s hes like some o ld notorious Emperor of Rome. But no stars blazed across the sky when he was born No Wise Men found his hovel. This crowded bar Where dancers twist and tum holds all the fame 14
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And recognition he will ever earn On earth or heaven He leans against the bar And pours his old unhappy longing in the saxophone. GEORGE CAMPBELL HOLY Holy be the white head of a Negro Sacred be the black flax of a black child. Holy be The golden down That will stream in the waves of the winds And will thin like dispersing cloud Holy be Heads of Chinese hair Sea calm sea impersonal Deep flowering of the mellow and traditional. Heads of peoples fair Bright shimmering from riches of their species; Heads of Indians With feeling of distance and space and dusk: Heads of wheaten gold, Heads of peoples dark So strong so original: All of the earth and the sun! mSTORY MAKERS Women stone breakers Hammers and rocks Tired child makers Haphazard frocks. Strong thigh Rigid head Bent nigh Hard white piles Of stone Under hot sky In the gully bed. II No smiles No sigh No moan. 15
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III Women child beare r s Pregnant frocks Wilful toil sharers Destiny shapers History makers Hammers and rocks. WORKER Wby praise him lightly when he turns to die? Maybe the night is bright, his fiery court; Maybe the darkness for a night of mourning New day: the sun's eternal sport Watching the earth of life and death and sorrow Now he is dead Is there for him tomorrow? His Earth which claims him for her own Full knows the lover she has sown Measure him? His death is living, Living for the land which knows no death: He wears the silken day, the veils of night His hands that hungered at your heart a time Are now the trees and paths, his epitaphs. The stars can tell with their sphinx eyes He's Earth, her lover, and surmise. OWEN CAMPBELL THE WASHERWOMEN Down where the river beats jtsel against the stones And washes them in clouds of frothy spray, Or foaming fumbles through them with the thousand tones Of an orchestra, The women wash, and humming keep a sort of time : And families of bubbles frisk and fioat away To be destroyed, To be destroyed, Like all the baffled hopes that had their little suns, Tossed on the furious drifts of disappointments But all the tide. Cradles these clinging bubbles ever still, alike The friendly little hopes that never leave the heart 16
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In this big haH of rushing waters women wash And with the sound of washing. With the steady heaving of their slender shoulders As they rub their stubborn rags upon the boulders. They keep a sort of time ... With their thoughts. These were unchanging Like the persistent music here Of swirling waters, The crash of wet clothes beaten on the stones. The sound of wind in leaves. Or frog croaks after dusk, and the low moan Of the big sea fighting the river's mouth. The ever changing patterns in the clouds Before their dissolution into rain; Or the gay butterflies manoeuvering Among the leafy camouflage that clothes the banks And hides their spent remains when they collapse and die; Are symbols of their hopes and gaudy plans Which once they dreamt. But finally they learn to hope And make plans less elaborate. It was the same With those that washed before them here And passed leaving the soap-stained stones Where others now half stoop like devotees To pagan gods. They have resigned themselves to day long swishing Of wet cloth chafing the very stone; And the big symphony of waters rushing Past clumps of tall stems standing alone, Apart, like band-leaders, or sentinels. They must hear the heavy hum Of wings of insects overgrown, Cleaving the air like bombers on a plotted course. They must hear the long 'Hush' of the wind in leaves As dead ones flutter down like living things Until the shadows come. JAN CAREW MANARABISI Legend that stelling bore was hard as greenheart core of piles driven into heart of a river: reapers watched boatmen come and go 17
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till Hanna voices jarred the dust, and white cranes winged their way complacently to nests in long savannahs: green grass pointed legions of sharp blades like warr ior's s pears abandoned on pavements of streets of eternity. for dark when voices spnke with singing of frogs and piper owls played throaty melodies in orchestra of silent trees. Who parted long night to breach dawn when life was a cave of green dungeons exploded peripheries of light. while death sailed dreamlessly on a dark river Burning eyes peered from window to watch green galaxies crowding the world. Islands of grass rooted in moving tides, tall cocerite palms leaning to gaze at images in dark pools of sky and water. The hungry heart leapt from hard stelling of life rippling mirror still of death, bursting like flower of concentric rings to wash grim hope on shores of time. Howler baboons rent morning with roaring, heralds of memes is feeding on berries from Long John trees. Life was a blood-stain, crimson like cocks-comb flower red as wild orchids and legend remains hard as green-heart core of piles driven into heart of a river. MARTIN CARTER Poems of Prison BARE NIGHT WITHOUT COMFORT In a bare night without comfort Stood like an infant hearing a drum; Shadows and green grass spinning But clutched at a world without nearing. Like dark ball rising from nothing Hurling curse at me and full of scorn : Bare night without comfort Stood like an infant hearing a drum. 18
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WHO WALKS A PAVEMENT Iron gate the terrible hands of a clock A calendar with days scratched off and buried, Slant roof of slate black as the floor of tight cell Is not a prison, nor a convict shelter. A prison is go back, go back, go back, Lash of two things, shell which is the heart And heart which is the shell-the hollow tear The man of time whose look can stain a sky Who walks a pavement, walks and disappears. THE KIND EAGLE I make my dance right herel Right here on the wall of a prison I dance! This world's hope is a blade of fury And we. who are sweepers of an ancient sky. Discoverers of new planet sudden stars We are the world's hope-And so therefore, I rise again, I rise again Freedom is a white road with green grass like love. Out of my time I carve a monument Out of a jagged block of convict years I carve it The sharp knife of dawn glitters in my hand But how bare is everything tall tall tree infinite air, the unrelaxing tension of the world and only hope, hope only, the kind eagle soars and I dance on the wall of prison! It is not easy to be free and boldl It is not easy to be poised and boundl It is not easy to endure the spike! So river flood. drown not my pillar feet! So river flood. col1apse to estuaryl wheels in flight Only the heart's life. the kind eagle soars and wheels in flight. ALL OF A MAN o strike kind eagle. strikel Grip at this prison and this prison wall 19
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Scream and accuse the guilty cage of heaven Hurling me here, hurling me here. o strike kind eagle,strike All of a man is heart is hope All of a man can fly like a bird o strike kind eagle, strike. THE DISCOVERY OF COMPANION This tower of movement bending on the world is shocked to motion crumbling knee and face in tbe strange sands of discovery a gasp of fear is the first farewell to death the first wave of a hand, t he first heart beat. But the retum of arrival is merciless is a pool of dark water. a terrible mirror. To bend on a planet of misery is revelation like apocalypse No longer the trunk of a palm, the trunk of a tree but pillar of endurance. Yes. to be born again, astonished and made bare is awareness of companion. While the blue swords of lightning kill knowledge is intense and scorching fire. And only when a man is clad in flame can he be made to know companion. n This is his first companion valuable fear a beacon on the sea. a lane of light. This matron of the trembling loin of maD becomes companion at the precipice, His human hands are brittle and wiil Clack like the wall of his heart. In the ladder from the cave the rungs of time bend like the working roots that eat tbe soil. But fear of losing all is strong like life losing but not lost. Fear of inhuman movement is the curse or the blessing, guide of traveller. 20
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m While time is measured in the stretch of years night can be measureless. The veinless womb of darkness breeds a bird. the flying child of fear or curse or blessing to soar in the blue gables of the world's imprisonment. And this too is companion mother of life and motion. The stranded cables lOosen bit by bit and smk in the flood of a river. The brittle heart expands a moistened flower. And the kind eagle soars again but in the tension of his wing and shadow moves a man. Now this is the completion of discovery the life of the world. So man is wrapped or clad in gowns of fire each human clutches at companion in an original sequence, no desire of death. The arrival in the camp of broken glass is fun of wounding points. And the streets of life are set about with knives to cut tho travelling Merciless and bare the moving world revolves like a circling star. Only men of fire will survive all else will move to ashes and to air. DEATH OF A SLAVE Above green cane arrow is blue skybeneath green arrow is brown earth -dark is the shroud of slavery o\'et the river over the forest over the field. Aiel black is skin Aiel red is heart .. roUDd it looks 21
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over the world over the Forest over the sun. in the dark earth in cold dark earth time plants the seeds of anger this is another world but above is same blue sky same sun-below is same deep heart of agony. cane field is green dark green green with life of its own heart of slave is red deep red red with life of its own. day passes like long whip over the back of slave day is burning whip biting the neck of slave but sun falls down like old man beyond the dim line of the River and white birds come flying, flying flapping at the wind white birds like dreams come settling down night comes from down river like thief night comes from deep forest in a boat of silence-dark is the shroud the shroud of night over the river over the Forest over the Field. slave staggers and falls face is on earth drum is silent silent like night hollow like boat between the tides of sorrow in the dark floor in the cold dark earth time plants the &eeds of anger 22
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THREE POEMS OF SHAPE AND MOTION A SEQUENCE Nomba'Oae I was wondering if I could shape this passion just as I wanted in solid fire. I was wondering if the strange combustion of my days the tension of the world inside of me and the strength of illy beart were enough. I was wondering if I could stand as tall while the tide of the sea rose and fell If the sky would recede as I went or the earth would emerge as I came to the door of morning locked against the sun I was wondering if I could make myself nothing but fire, pure and incorruptible If the wound of the wind on my face would be healed by the work of my life Or the growth of the pain in my sleep would be stopped in the strife of my days I was wondering if the agony of years could be traced to the seed of an hour. H the roots tbat spread out in tbe swamp ran too deep for the issuing flower I was wondering if I could find myself all that I am in all I could be. If all the population of stars would be less than the things I could utter And the challenge of space in my soul be filled by the shape I become Number Two Pull off yub shirt and throw 'way yuh hat Kick off yuh shoe and stamp down the spot Tear off yuh dress and open yuhself And dance like you mad Far far. Oh left foot right foot, left -Ah boy! Right foot, left foot, right -Ah boy! Run down the road 23
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Run up the sky But run like you mad Far far. Jump off the ground Pull down a star Bum till you bleed Far far. Oh right foot. left foot. right Ah boy! Left foot. right foot, left -Ah boy! Oh right foot, right foot Left foot, left foot Dance like you mad Far far I walk slowly in the wind Number Three (i) watching myself in things I did not make in jumping shadows and in limping cripples dust on the earth and houses tight with sickness deep constant pain. the dream without the sleep. I walk slowly in the wind hearing myself in the loneliness ofa child in woman s grief which is not understood in coughing dogs when midnight lingers l ong on stones. on streets and then on echoing stars, that bum all night and suddenly go out. I walk slowly in the wind knowing myself in every moving thing in years and days and words that mean so much strong hands that shake long roads that walk and deeds that do themselves and aU this world and all these lives t() Jive. (n) I walk slowly in the wind remembering scorn and naked men in darkness and huts of iron rivetted to earth. Cold huts of iron stand upon this earth like rusting prisons.
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Each wall is marked and each wide roof is spread like some dark wing casting a shadow or a living curse. I slowly in the wind to lifted sunset red and gold and dim a long brown river slanting to an ocean a fishing boat, a man who cannot drown. I walk slowly in the wind remembering me amid the surging river amid the drought and all the merciless flood and all the growth and all the life of man. (ill) I walk slowly in tho wind and birds are swift. the sky is blue like silkFrom the big sweeping ocean of water an iron ship rusted and brown anchors itself. And the long river runs like a snake silent and smooth. I walk slowly in the wind I hear my footsteps down the tide echoing like a wave on the sand or a wing on the wind echoing echoing a voice in the soul, a laugh in the funny silence. (iv) I walk slowly in tho wind I walk because I cannot crawl or fly. UNIVERSITY OF HUNGER is the university of hunger the wide waste is the pilgrimage of man the long march. The, print of hunger wanders in the land the green tree bends above the long forgotten the plains of life rise up and fall in spasms the huts of men are fused in misery, 2S
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They come treading in the hoofmarks of the mUle passing the ancient bridge the grave of pride the sudden flight the terror and the time. They come from the distant village of the flood passing from middle air to middle earth in the common hours of nakedness. Twin bars of hunger mark their metal brows twin seasons mock them parching drougbt and flood is the dark ones the half sunken in tbe land is they who had no voice in the emptiness in the unbelievable in the shadowless They come treading on the mud floor of the year mingling with dark heavy waters and the sea sound of the eyeless flitting bat, o long is the march of men and long is the life and wide is the span. is air dust and the long distance of memory is the hour of rain when sleepless toads are silent is broken chimneys smokeless in the wind is brown trash huts and jagged mounds of iron They come in long lines toward the broad city. Is the golden moon like a big coin i n the sky is the flood of bone beneath the floor of flesh is the beak of sickness breaking on the stone. o long is the march of men and long is the life and wide is the span. o cold is the cruel wind blowing o cold is the hoe in the ground They come like sea birds flapping in the wake of a boat is the torture of sunset in purple bandages is the powder of fire spread like dust in the twilight is the water melodies of white foam on wrinkled sand. The long streets of night move up and down baring the thighs of a woman 26
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and the cavern of generation The beating drum returns and dies away the bearded men fall down and go to sleep the cocks of dawn stand up and crow like bugles. is they who rose early in the morning watching the moon die in the dawn is they who heard the shell blow and the iron clang is they who had no voice in the emptiness in the unbelievable in the shadow less o long is the march of men and long is the life and wide is the span. FRANK A. COLL YMORE HYMN TO THE SEA Like all who live on small islands I must always be remembering the sea, Being always cognizant of her presence; viewing Her through apertures in the foliage; hearing, When the wind is from the south, her music, and smelling The warm rankness of her; tasting And feeling her kisses on bright sunbathed days: I must always be remembering the sea. Always, always the encircling sea, Eternal: lazylapping, crisscrossed with stillness, Or windruffed, aglitter with gold; and the surf Waist-high for children, or horses for Titans; Her lullaby, her singing, her moaning; on sand, On shingle, on breakwater, and on rock; By sunlight, starlight, moonlight, darkness: I must always be remembering the sea. Go down to the sea upon this random day By metalled road, by sandway, by rockpath. And come to her. Upon the polished jetsam, Shell and stone and weed and saltfruit Torn from the underwater continents, cast Your garments and despondencies; re-enter Her embracing womb: a return, a completion I must always be remembering the sea. Life came from the sea, and once a goddess arose Fullgrown from the saltdeep; love 27
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Flows from the sea. a flood: and the food Of islanders is reaped from the sea's harvest. And not only life and sustenance; visions, too, Are born of the sea: the patterning of her rhythm Finds echoes within the musing mind. I must always be remembering the sea. Symbol of fruitfulness, symbol of barrenness. Mother and destroyer, the calm and the storm! Life and desire and dreams and death Are born of the sea; this swarming land Her creation, her signature set upon the salt ooze To blossom into life; and the red hibiscus And the red roots bum more brightly against her blue, I must always be remembering the sea. OSWALD DURAND CHOUCOUNE HAm'S MOST CELEBRATED FOLK POEM (Translation by W. Adolpbe Roberts) Behind the big patch of pinguins there The other day Choucoune I met. She smiled on me when she saw me stare. I cried: "Good Lord, what a pretty pet!" (Repeat) She said: "You really think so. my love," And the little birds heard us from above. (Repeat) When I think of that, my grieving pains. Since then. my two feet are in chains. (Repeat) Choucoune is a sambo; she has eyes That shine like candles lit for you. Her breasts are firm. and straight they rise. Ah. if Choucoune had but been true! We stayed there and we chatted long, And the birds in the woods were glad. with song. Better forget. for the grieving pains. Since then. my two feet are in chains. (Repeat) Choucoune's little teeth are white as milk. Her mouth star-apple colours took. Not large, she is plump and smooth as silk. 28
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Such women please me at a look But yesterday is not today! The birds heard what she had to say! Perhaps they know how grieving pains, Since then, my two feet are in chains! I went with her to her mama's hut; As good an old one as there could be! Who while we drank chocolate and coconut Said plainly: "This young man pleases me!" o little birds in the woods that fly, Is it really all finished and gone by? Better f o rget for the grieving pains Since then, my two feet are in chains! (Repeat) The furniture was ready: a fine, deep bed. Two mattresses a wardrobe beyond comc"r Round table with napkins and cloth to spread Curtains and cane-chairs and a rocking chair Just fifteen days I had to wait ... Little birds, little birds, hear my fate! ... You will understand that my grieving pains Since then, my two feet are in chain s A little white fellow came down there. With a little red beard and rosy face, A watch in his pocket pleasing hair. -He was the cause of my disgrace He found Choucoune a pretty dove He spoke French to her . She fell in love Better forget too muc h it p ains. Choucoune left me with my feet in chains A wonder the saddest in all this song The thing folk cannot forget so soon Is that in spite of my cruel wrong, I love and shall always love Choucoune. She is going to make a little quadroon! Look. birds! Her belly is now a full moon! Be still! Close your beaks! The grieving pains The two feet of Pierre his two feet are in chains! (Slowly) Translator's Note The rendering of Choucoune should be in the form of a chant. with in cidental musical accompaniment on a banjo or an accordion. Often the reciter improvises a mere thread of a tune. 29
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Lightning-flash wasON HARRIS AGAMEMNON the beacon of homecoming: the dark night is illuminated in a split second. Thunder rolls like a breaker of magnitude in space the trees stand caught in the tension s of instantaneous tumult : the crowded world knows the violent c onfines of storm to be over or not yet begun. So full of stark memory it is blinded by the lightning stofm of time: like a king, majesty of action stumbles over a trivial pebble, the road of homecoming is dark as night. doom lit up like daylight, all armour ineffectual. The swift lightnings of reason and unreason shed uneasiness over the truce of god, the implacable warrior, whose station is life or death Each flash lengthens to brief sunset, Of shorten s to noon, individual and leaving the recollection and murmur of violence The trees are not more captive in the photography of storm than each ominous warrior, whose brightness looks substanceless. One remains in the darkness alive to count the gain or loss, the vesti g e of victory or defeat, from a blinding revelation of peril in the lightning-flash. What station is the glory of that noble king? must he always stand at the wen of time flashing stilI the stream or murmur of violence as an omen of war fulfilled? his strength no more than his peers who are substanceless with the shadows of the dead: his features featureless and enduring like the storm warning: Or must he g o to his journey's end to the other timeless well, must he go? where home is both time and timeless height and depth always home Home is a mysterious whisper the strong winds voice faith or conspiracy: the conspirac y of faith or of love, of lovers: yet the storm ou t of love s heart has its own faint s e c ret and no breath of warning may b l ow Silent lies the wa y home the road of the spirit, the aftermath of victory. When war is over, the silent flashing beacon faces home and eternity like a dream recaptured a dream of conflict ended a dream of tranquility The memory of homeland, the eternal sky, the green leaf and the cordial of life the certainty of days that pass under easy clouds 3 0
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without long shadows to divide stream from substance! Each living definition of beauty smothered in the murky heart of space when it overpowers and drenches the constancy of earth: but the stream darkens only to flash again. Home is the clarity of the soul in the certainty of destruction. The purpose or the destiny of a king-to endure lightnings of fate must render august and memorable the home of man wherever it be. the startling recovery of time through the murky feud that deforms constancy. So life darkens under branches of home into murder and death covering friend and foe alike. But the truce of god still endures when lightnings flash and point to the wounds of the world in one instant of perception for all: this fateful flash the promise or well of a king THE DEATH OF HECTOR, TAMER OF HORSES Over the mountains and over the sea runs a black horse, his hoof Pounds the mountains and unsettles the sea His hoof grounds the mountains Like the bones of the sea. Like Death runs so swiftly, bis black limbs remember my very vain breath and my boast in the stars I mount him and I bold him with the sun for a saddle and a bit made of stars. I mount him and I hold hini with my breatb on the bridle and my boast in the stars I mount and I hold him with my breath turning silver like a bridle of stars. Far up on the mountains and deep down in the sea I ride my black horse up and down and far. My breath now deserts me, I spit saliva and stars, I stop breathing the gore and mud I grow breathless. ride faster and ride far. My ultimate horse of darkness leaves earth's doors ajar. I am kneaded into a star. I am kneaded in a cave of darkness where Death's hoof ploughed a scar. I am kneaded on the mountains near heaven where Death's hoof cut a scar 31
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like a grave for a man and a mortal the mud and spit of stars. The mud and spit of stars are in the and in the kneading Of every mortal being Who rides the black horse far THE STONE OF THE SEA (Ulysses to Calypso) Muffling time and muffled by time ironed out to surrender the light or like a star is the deep bed of the sea like sunshine crushed to yield blood in darkness. This night of ocean is its own star of memory. waving gently the vast water reflects an eerie life and solitude majestic, strange. an experience of hollowness and yet of solid mass like substance. The minstrel balance of fins is feet of dancers. whose poise or quality is the web of destiny. the organ of reunion and separation. Every inclination to crawl or creep upon immensity is nameless. Yet it is somefimes called Birth, it is sometimes called Death. It is like a stone that melts into flesh. it is like a colour mysterious in half-light, equally solid as melting, internally shaded, externally bright. It appears black, it appears white. merman or mermaid, deeper than primitive desire in life. it has no footing. it has no ledge. but in appearance like doom in a cold spray it sometimes rests or is blown over the range of the immortal deep. Immortality is part of its nature, the stone of fire which is resting and yet never rests like the sea. The whirling chasms of sensation are fixed like pyramids of immobility, a mindless fixity in every instant of time. Only the immortal tluid of stone as star can tum a succession of waves into light (fhis is the prayer of earthly love to move the stone of the sea for Glory and its invaluable human spouse, a mona! being, like Penelope) 32
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CHARCOAL (epUogue to tbe senses: the heart) Bold outlines are drawn to encompass tbe history of the world: crude but naked empbasis rests on each figure of the past wherein the golden sunlight burns raw and unsophisticated. Fires of brightness are sheltered to bum the fallen limbs of men: the green spirit of leaves like smoke rises to mark the barrow of earth and dwindles to perfection. The stars are sparks in space and time, the fury of fire that blackens the limbs of each god who faIls: spendthrift creation. The stable dew-drop is flame. The sun burnishes each star in preparation for every deserted lane Time lies uneasy between the paintless houses weather-beaten and dark. The Negro once leaned on his spade breathing the smoke of his labour, the arch of his body banked to shelter or tame his slow burning heart like a glittering diamond: or else like charcoal to grain. the world, lines of a passionate intention TROY The working muses nourish Hector hero of time: like small roots that move, greener leaves to fathom the earth. This is the controversial tree of time beneath whose warring branches the sparks of history fa]l. So eternity to season. it is converted into an exotic roof for love, the barbaric conflict of man. So he must die first to be free. Solid or uprooted in pain, his bright limbs must yield their glorious intentions to the secret root of the heart. And musing waters dart like arrow of memory over him, a visionary: smarting tears of the salty earth. The everchanging branches of the world. the green loves and the beautiful dark veins in time must fall to lightnings and be calm in broken compassion : 33
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but the wind moves outermost and hopefu l auguries: the strange opposition of a flower on a branch to its dark wooden companion On the gravel and the dry earth each dry leaf is powder under the wheels of war. But each brown root has protection from the spike of flame. Each branch tunnels to meet a weI! or inscrutable history shows the mortality of man broken into scales that heal the strife of god. The petals of space return in a gnarled persistence like time To claim eternity as its own time is this tree of the past still grows from a mortal bosom. So now when Hector dies, the creation of a hero kills a father, a husband and all What frail succession continues! Why must he fall when still a green branch why shoulder a war with the sulky sky of god To be truly mortal-must Hector to the immortals climb? or to be truly fateful to Hades lean before time and be dusty and forgetful? What glory has the almighty promised him? only this-capricious lightning of victory while Achilles rests beside the ancient sea while death waits in the guise of immortality. Far off the clouds are tinged with pink and purple the fire and darkness, the passion and the gloom of storm the unearthly sense of valour subdued: but the caves of death wait for the mortal who turns in brightness to the immortal blandishments of fame or firel the wild contest and the atrocious end 34
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must dapple the world with flame and extinction like still shadows moving in the memories of god. Save for this tree that continues out of the breast of love. shelter for what is beleaguered, the struggle that lives and shines! So Hector knows the trunk of man. the branches of heroes and gods foreshadowing the labour of all. Loses his spear and groans to leave his love: so is he pursued by a contradiction, The fine blades of grass point their green arrows to his heart: the sun marches to meet his young night. his red flowers burning like inexorable stars: his roots serve to change illusion and forsake blossoming coals of immortal imperfection ROY HEArn THE PEASANTS The people plough the land but do not own it. Their children see the land but do not inherit it Labour beneath the ruthless sun broiling and burning through the skin bears no fruit but yet it is better to die on rich brown soil than in the street These noble peasants who know the pure and simple life suffer from this rare knowledge, and forever kissing the hem of destitution they live with green fields of rice and pasture sown with the rich dung of contented beasts Like a tree so arched by the wind that its crown would kiss the grass so seem the figures of reapers that gently rob the silent earth Fortitude in a shattered shirt when the sun retires and dusk draws her blanket over the land They skirt the dams, these pillars of dignity to homes of peace and hope and after the rains a breath of wfug brings a pungent scent of steaming earth and trees give up their fruit and the harvest is garnered.
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CECIL HERBERT SONG Night's end and bird song. Bright birds, All through the morn from the child's waking hour, From perches high in. with cascades of chords. Drenched the leafy dew-starred hair of trees When the gradual, vivid dawn was done The filigree of dew drops disappeared, Bird song of the past was blurred And fumbling the hairless trees Came time's haze of dust-laden years Which makes future and past so vague; And also came the fear that stunned The fear that I'd grown into stone. But to-day, bright thoughts have scoured the brain And I try for the happy words To express my hope, large as the sun, That violent as the poui Which explodes into flowers when earth is cast iron I shall rend my veil of fears And burst into song with the radiant tongue Of the birds, in the trees, in the dawn. AND THE POUIS SING In far days in happy shires In the that all day creep From virgin moulds, in the fires Of a sullen but sun, deep, Our roots drilled deep and found In caverns underground Sweet water Rich as the laughter That slept in Carib eyes before fierce slaughter. Through the soft air failing, Swifter than the sleek hawk dives On the dove, on silent wing PHfered their caciques lives At our feet in our shade Where once they had played In childhood Children of the sun Who prayed to the sun to avenge their blood. 36
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Hostile grew the sun and pitiless Spear sword arrow of Jight grew fiery And in the blindness of their bitterness Bored bird and beast and tree; Under the whip of savage winds And intric8lte with wounds Necrotic flesh Fell fold by fold from tlanks That never before had known the driver's lash Old, we are old before our prime (Springs of laughter ran dry And hearts atrophied) and in our time Have heard lips lift their cry To the stone-deaf skies. have seeD How the hawk has heeD Stripped of pride In Decessary propitiation; In vale on hill where slave and cacique died. Have seen from the blood arise The cactus. live columbarium Of the winged tears of indignant eyes. And from its flowers come Dim odours. sweetening the air Through the desolate years And bringing barren hearts Auguries of new days. new faith, bright sinJing. E. MeG. KEANE TO . Shyly a little because your innocence is still innocent of itself. and you have not learned your modesty by heart. my thoughts embraces of your soul end every searching their sadg;ss: but since sighs are not fulfilled in their own due longing, and hope remains mercy 37
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only until the warm love of its deception waltzes over the edge of our one lost moment, my searching is forever and s o be your innocenc e MY LOVE ARE YOU STRONG My love. are you strong? I will bring my life to you like a bundle of washing: And all they say is my soul I will bring Like washing to your sweet rivers And will you say this? Drink deeply Sink deeply Dream deeply of cleansing In the rivers bones . My love, are you strong? I will bring my sins to you On the breast of your rivers. like stones I will bring my sins Prayerful to be swept l\long and away And will you say this? Will you say Sigh sweetly Die gently Dream deeply of cleansing In the rivers' bones Translations by MIRIAM KOSHLAND ETIENNE LERO (Martinique) HE LEFT TODA Y He left today when the grieving forest poured out its flowers in waves in a great rhythm of injured things ... He left And since his memory floats liquid and capricious on the golden steamer 38
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that the jealous soul of old deers forgets in the forest of their dreaming youth. A shepherd whistled a song that was never heard again And the lost bell of goats in the mountains was mournful like the prayer of the wind on the slope . JEAN JOSEPH (Madagascar) POEM Here is she whose eyes are prisms of sleep and whose lids are heavy with dreams whose feet are buried in the sea and whose slimy hands stick out of it filled with corals and blocks of glistering salt. She will put them in little heaps near a bay of mist and sell them to naked sailors whose tongues were cut out until the rain begins to fall. Then she willI no longer be visible and one will only see her hair flying in the wind, like a clump of unwinding algae, and perhaps some grains insipid salt. GEORGES DESPORTES (Martinique) WE HAVE ABANDONED We have abandoned the rabble, the unfrocked We have stripped us of our European clothes Magnificent and barbarous brutes we are; And we have danced altogether nude Altogether nude around the high flames Altogether nude under the red sun of America, Altogether nude under the bamboos and the palmettos of the islands Altogether nude like savages altogether nude like Negfoc839
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And we shout our joy of being free We sing our deliverance and our liberation Under the luminous sun of the tropical Caribbean; And the tom-tom re-echoes our joy ... On our bright faces, generous and relaxed. The black joy mocks with great flashes of wbite teeth! Macerated in the alcohol of our African joy we rime a new music To the blows of muffled roIling in drum's cadence To the dry beaten blows. vibration of drumsticks And we hurl against the world our primitive challenge Our prognathious challenge! Altogether nude under the red sun of America Altogether nude around the great wood-pile of joy Altogether nude under the palms. nude under the bamboOs We shout under the sky of the Tropics; To the sound of powerful jazz from the Caribbean islands The pride of being black The glory of being Negroes. LEOPOLD SEDAR-SENOHOR (Senegal) AND WE SHALL BATHE And we shall bathe. my friend, in an African presence Of Furnishings from Guinea and the Congo ponderous and polished sombre and serene Masks primitive and pure On distant walls yet so near! Tabourets of honour for the hereditary hosts from the princes of the High-country. Of wild and haughty perfumes, thick tresses of silence. Cushions of shadow and of leisure the noise of a quiet well, Classical words and in the distance the alternating chants like the loincloths of Sudan. And then friendly light, your blue blindness will soften the obsession of this presence-Black white and red. oh, red like the soil of Africa. THE HURRICANE The hurricane uproots everything around me
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And the hurricane tears out within me leaves and futile words. Whirlwinds of passion blow in silence But peace on the dry tornado, on the flight of winter! You, ardent wind, pure wind, wind of beautiful season, bum each flower, each empty thought When the sand falls agam upon the dunes of the heart. Servant-girl, suspend your statuesque gesture, and you children, your games and your ivory laughter, You, that it consumes your voice and your body. drying the perfume of your flesh The flame that lightens my night like a column, like a palm Embrace my lips of blood, Spirit, breathe on the strings on my kora That my song will rise, as pure as the gold from Galam (*Kora a kind of harp It has 16-32 strings.) AIME CESAIRE (Martinique) SUN SERPENT Sun serpent's eye fascinating my eye and the ocean filthy from islands snapping with the fingers of roses flaming spear and my body unharmed by lightning water mounts the dead bodies of light lost in the pompless halls whirlwinds of icicles crown the heart reeking of crows our hearts this is the voice of tamed lightning turning upon their hinges of cracks transmission of anolis in the landscapes of cut glass these are tbe vampire flowers climbing to the relief of orchids elixir of the central fire righteous fire of the mango tree in a night covered with bees my desire a hazard of tigers surprised at the brimstones and alarm goldens the childish strata and my pebble body eating fish eating leaves and sleep the sweetness of the word Brazil at the bottom of the swamp. THE WHEEL The wheel is the most beautiful invention of men and his only one there is the sun which turns 41
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there is the earth which turns there is your face which turns on the axle of your neck when you cry but your minutes will not coil the licked up blood around the spool of life the art to suffer is as sensitive as the stump of a tree under the knife of winter the bind weary from not drinking puts' for me unexpectedly upon the well's edge your face of a dismastered schooner your face like a village asleep at the bottom of a lake to be reborn on the day of grass and the year of fruit. GEORGE W. LAMMING SWANS By no other name are these The imperturbable birds more beautiful, No likelier image for the summer's curl Of white light caught from the sea's Arterial cells; or the moon s wry Face carved on the curved aristocratic sky. Sailing the solitude of their customary waters Dark and dimpled in the windy morning, Instinct prompts a ritual of preening The rude arrangement of their feathers, And leaping with the leaping light of dawn They crown the river with a white perfection. Later the circus arrives With its ready-made apparatus of pleasures, Dogs and women and the dutiful masters Of small boats their lives Through charted areas ,Of: water And chuckled warnings of the wind's laughter. The birds thoughtful, decorous, austere, Retreat to a far side of the river, Their eyes held in a pu:zz1ed stare Measure their recently arrived spectator. Some cluster to a deep deliberation Or ponder in amazement their own reflection Leisurely the evening ambles, Through the stained air, on tom leaves, 42
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Over the lame, dry grasses Sadly, silently the late light falls, And the waving curl of water dies Where the winged white quietude at anchor lies. Now blank desertion fills the senses, Over the howling city Louder than the cry of industry, The moon sheds a contagion of madness, And water fills the eyes of the visitor Entering the legend of this historic river BIRTHDAY POEM FOR CLIFFORD SEALY Today I would remember you whom birth brought no lucky dip From which to pluck a permanent privilege, And pain pushed prematurely into prose. The photograph that recreates a child whose glance Cast on the rescuing rock reads tyranny His body bare to the bellowing wind Has proved your former existence, So when the season of awareness came Passion made politics a serious game And poverty your partner. How well I understood The intolerant gesture, the juvenile lust to murder An evil that had forged your life. My birth records a similar story: The freezing bastardy, the huddled tenantry Where children carry parents' pains like a uniform Articulate only in their loyalty to life The individual desire or despair mocking most faithfully Barometers that measure another's will And happiness as time indeed has shown Absolved by the evil, intelligent question: Was that piece of land a paying concern? Those who sta.rt life without a beginning Must always recall their crumbling foundations Rushing past affliction of the womb's unfortunate opening, Reconsider now and again their earliest ambitions Or poised somewhere between loss and a possible arrival Question their precarious present portion What new fevers arise to reverse the crawl OUf islands made towards their spiritual extinction? Do you still patrol the city's unsavoury sites Probing the prostitutes' hearts? Setting your intelligence .. ...
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An exercise in pity as the warm nights Drift their human flotsam before your questioning glance? Nothing is changed in the news that reaches me here: Papers continue to print the impossible. and rumours telegraph Whatever falls within the senses' gauge. Young poets are decorated with foreign approval For precocious statements in a borrowed language, Fashionable women whom comfort couldn't bless with sense Still flock to applaud lectures by men Who've a soft spot for the sound of their voices. Corruption is keen: time throbs With the ache of the proud and the sensitive like you Who angrily wade through the vacuum Forever afloat with oily seas, While politicians posing incredible paunches Parading their magical and primHlve power Fit the incompetent into jobs. Life is similar in (what some call) the Mother Country Where our people wear professions like a hat That cannot prove what the head contains. Success knows what grimace to assume. Mediocrity is informed by a bright sense of bluff. And Democracy a convenient attitude for many, Students whom the huge city has shorn of glamour Divorced from their status by a defect of colour Find consolation in Saturday nights With eloquent white whores that dance; Or at nightfall over their new habit of tea Argue with an elephant's lack of in t elligence Our culture must be spelt with a West Indian C. We must suffer in patience whom life received On islands cramped with disease no economy can cure, Go with or without our lovers to the quiet shore Where the reticent water weaves its pattern And crabs crawl with a peculiar contemplation of the land, Move through the multitude's monotonous cry For freedom and politics at the price of blood, Yet live every in the soul's devouring flame. Until we fold with the folding earth. Erect our final farewell in tree or cloud, Hoping (if possible) for a people's new birth So you who care little for festival, The seasonal sports, the carnival Of barren souls in the February noon, 44
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Preferring to inhabit your room. hoping to lean On some durable solace in pages that justify Your honest but innocent worship of the Russian regime May not question why your exiled friend, Seldom at ease in the habits of his time. Never understanding why people pretend To manufacture good wishes at certain times of the year Should yet try sincerely to offer you A gift in words on your birthday EGBERT MARTIN (LEO) THE SWALLOW Who would not follow thee. swallow, in flight On clean, swift wings thro' the opal light. Away in purple of setting sun. With a mad, wild joy till the day is done? Who would not sweep, like a flash, thro' and thro The deep. vast void of the liquid blue, With never a care but to cut the air. With never a heed but delirious speed, And a life-a full life that is life indeed? Who would not soar ever more and more. Till the great earth seems but a spectre shore? Who would not be in a sphere like thee, Of glorious ether, for ever free 7 Who would not mount with a swifter speed Than the eye can follow or thought can heed; With never a pause save to gently float, On the sea of air like a drifting boat, With a soft, full breast and a curving throat? Past river and lake past the hills of white, Past the houses tops at a dizzy height, Past the silent lake thro' whose crystal breast Thy faint shadow flits like a spiritual guest, Past the low long lines of the great flat plains Where eternal silence for ever reigns, So swiftly you fly now low and now high In chase with the clouds that lazily fly, A voyager voyaging joyously. Who would not follow thee, swallow, in flight, In the cool, sweet air of the eady night? When each star hung high with its cheerful eye, Drops golden treasure right gloriously, 45
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And the moon high hung. like a cenSer swung. Floods a rare light ever fresh and young. Oh, who would not follow thee. beautiful swallow. From life and its trials so trying and hollow? Who would not rise. with a happy surprise Away and away into happier skies? THEMES OF SONG Splendour of morning, splendour of even, splendour of night, Splendour of sun and stars. and splendour of all things bright, Splendour in deepest deep, and splendour in highest height, These are the themes of song. Beauty of ocean, beauty of river, beauty of lake. Beauty that comes in dreams, and the living hues that wake, Beauty that gleams and glows for the very beautiful's sake; These are the themes of song. Music that floods the soul in waves of delicious sound Music that gushes fresh, spontaneously around, Music in every voice and murmur of nature found, These are the themes of song. TWILIGIIT The twilight shuddered into gloom The trees stood trembling in the air And flung their green umbrageous arms Above their wildly floating hair. While saddened misereres fell Like organ-peals in full excess Frottl breezes equal fall and swell In agonies of bitterness. The morning aged to older day And burst in shreds of vivid light. Bestrewing on the lying way Its carnival of heat and light The wind a wondrous "Gloria" rolled Deep through the cloudy arch of space. Chord after chord. whose notes of gold Were smothered in the rhyme of grace. 46
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WALTER MAC A. LAWRENCE KAIETEUR And falling in splendour sheer down from the height that should gladden the heart of an eagle to scan, That lend to the towering forest beside thee the semblance of shrubs trimmed and tended by man, That viewed from the brink where the vast amber volume that once was a stream cataracts into thee, Impart to the foothills surrounding the maelstrom beneath thee that rage as the troublous sea, The aspect of boulders that border a pool in the scheme of a rare ornamentalist's plan, Where, where is the man that before thee is thrilled not that scorneth the impulse to humble the knee, With the scene of thy majesty resting upon him, and conscious of flouting some terrible ban? Who, who can behold thee, 0 glorious Kaieteur, let down as it were from the fathomless blue, A shimmering veil on the face of the mountain obscuring its flaws from inquisitive view, Retouched with the soft, rosy glow of the morning and breaking the flow of desultory light, Or bathed in the brilliant translucence of noontide a mystical mirror resplendently bright. Or else in the warm sanguine glory of sunset, a curtain of gold with the crimsoning hue Of the twilight upon it or drenched in the silvery flood of the moonlight subliming the night, And feel not the slumbering spirit awaking to joy in the infinite greatly anew? ROGER MAIS I, SHALL WAIT FOR THE MOON TO RISE I shaH sit here and wait for the moon to rise, And when she shall look at me, From over the mountain-tops of tall bleak buildings And come smiling down the valleys of the streets, I shall ask her here to sit with me In a Chinese tea garden under a divi-divi tree. And a maiden golden like moon shaH come Wearing a clean white apron ... 47
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And I shall show her a bright new sixpence And bid her shut her eyes And paint with the pigments of all her dreams The broad brave canvas of the skies And she will think: 'He is a little madDecidedly he is a little mad . I shall sit here and wait for the moon to rise. WORDSWORTH McANDREW TO A CARRION CROW They call you Carrion Crow scorn to eat your flesh spit when they see you administering the last rites can you Cathartes: the Oean-up, yet if they only knew the secret of your strange religion. Once you were the silver bird of the heavens once you flew as high and as free as only a bird can. The sky was yours for you were king of the air but here was the secret of your discontent: it was not enough to just live and die, not-knowing. You kept asking, whence came I. whither go I. and why? The sky must hold the answer, you thought and sought long and desperately to glimpse what lay beyond it. Relentlessly you fought pitted bone and feather and tendon against the blue barrier that mocked you, locked you off from the secret world behind its curvature. But you were more determined than it knew and could fly higher. So you perspired at your quest until one inspired day you flew so hard and so fast against the blue closing your wings at the last minute for penetration that at last you had a look at the other side Nobody knows what you saw 48
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when you passed through but you burned in that sacred blue fire and returned. black as coals. dumb, numb from the experience to become this mendicant preacher minister to those souls who die without sacrament trading blessings for food a saved soul for a full belly. And now when I see you crowding a carcass for the unction or nailed against the sky like a crucifix with the two spots of tarnished silver beneath your wings where you'd closed them I long to have you say a De Profundis for me when I die, and I wonder: Was yours a punishment or a purification? IDLDA McDONALD EVENSONG Sunset had called in the celours But not yet was it dark. The pool lay a mirror of silver Without spot or mark. When out from the green mirrored mangroves Stepped a wonder of white A great heron wandering homeward, Before it was night. The pool held the moon and the heron. And the first white star. In a beauty beyond all imagining. As I watched from afar. And my heart sang aloud to its Maker In thanks and delight, Who gave me that moment of beauty. Before it was night. IAN McOONALD PINEAPPLE WOMAN Selling pineapple is her art Sad old woman pushing cart 49
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Near Dutch Stabroek every day You can find her minding tray Full of sunripe 'Quibo pine "Come an' buy me God-ripen pine!" When the sun is hot and gold 01' woman get a lot of pineapple sold Rich lady come with palmolive skin Then the bargaining fun begin Rich woman probably good at heart But she got to bargain to play the part So while silver shilling bursting her purse She letting fiy with less pence than curse And old woman with her age and pine Have to cut the price down fine So she squatting down beside she tray Twelve hard hours by the end of she day Pineapple ripe smelling sweet of sun Turning she belly by the time day done Dollar fifty profit from the fat gold pine If a day make so much she doing fine And go down Stabroek in Maytime rain Look for that old pine woman again She old grey dress bursting away Rotting and fade in the rains of May But she under the branch of a saman tree Still working out she destiny Selling pines from 'Quibo fat and gold Until the heart inside she chest get cold Forty years by Stabroek rain and shine Sad old woman sellinS pine And when she dead by a 'Quibo charcoal pit Nobody bother or care one shit She was buying pine to sell in the moming But she never reach to sell that morning Stabroek looks the same old way In suns of March or rains of May. SO
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SON ASLEEP-AGED SIX MONTHS Before our own sleep of passion, dreams and clocks Warm wife and my proud self watch by his sovereign bed, Over the child our smiling eyes like emperor's shine. In his warm life our hopes spring tall as spears Pray God he finds a destiny well-designed : Against the terrific future how can he sleep so soft ? He is not golden-armed. he is not tall or strong So gently born, so sweetly grown, so calm He rests soft beyond birth only half a year Deathless he must be, no pains will visit him He breathes quiet as white leaves of moonlight His fist clenches like a young rose in his sleep My son's face is serious for peace and good intent His small heart is buming like a star ; That is not so, he is not safe forever Death rages in man's bones all the days he lives My son's not singular, death rages in him too. Long time to come, long years past this proud present watchin, He will find agonies enough, he will be hurt The flesh kingly is but kings' dethronement comes Yet let him sleep so soft as this Give him some sweet preliminary of life Do not warn him too soon of cruelties and sleepless lusts. The bribery of habits, red wounds, the iron nations' wafS. In this raw age of jealous total moods .' When men soon march to orders behind dogmatic whims We watch and deeply love and we determine this: Take childhood's time and make a dream of it. BASIL McFARLANE POEM Music a kind of sleep imposes on this weary flesh wind beyond silence speech of the God who ordered trees flowering of dark earth light, essence of darkDess birth
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Lucifer massed in arrogant disorder all about pale quiet strength of stellar presences hears in a wonderful dread music a calm persistent tread above the wild torment of nameless waters. JACOB AND THE ANGEL And shall a man mortal though the mind covets eternity seek only this seek only to endure whether failings of breath and bonc, corruption of flesh and faith? Too thin too thin the wind of consolation here the outer edge of prayer the unex o:c i s ed ine x orci s able knife selflrnowledge is closer to distant stars whose stare is lonely and unexplained solemn and keen and unwinking like than to old Earth estranged now a pillow of cold stone EDWINA MELVILLE POEM Savage moon, Poignant cry Of man For his mate And wQman sultry Mockin$ With eyes of hate lithe and lonely Walking Along a wall Red skirt Blown about her legs And long black hair Falling over shoulden 52
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aDd' touchmg Breasts ;young arid' fWI' Of lite. Eager, nonchalant A dreamer, 'uSt strollin:i Along the w.u. KnoWing" The.-JDaq woQ1d...fOUOW. EDGAR MITfEUIOLZER MEDITATIONS OF A MAN SLlGBTLY DRUNK I came, and they d 'runkene<;l lightly With a medley of liquors There was falemuin. There were literary disagreement$, Poetical dIssonances. Yes, but chiefly there waa l'U1l;!.. They nUked to lDe of staIl7.U The ancient and the very modem They broached even painting, Haggled about fQl1ll, Over Epstein concorded with reverence, Yes, but chiefly there was rum . .' We jabbered of pendulums I Pendulums that swung like my vision. They gesticulated and bawled Ranting about matter, Eulogising imagery Yes, but never forgetting the rum We slashed at Swinburne, And we justly Idcked old Kipling. We grimaced dreadfully at Pater, How we hacked poor Donnc;, And sniffed at Rupert Brool\:e! Though, always. always, n;J.ind, There was the rum! E.M. ROACH TO My MOTHER It is not .07;1g, not S3
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Of the dead sun. nights of the crumbled moon: Nor far to go; not your roads of growth. Love, grief. labour of birth and bone And the slow slope from the blood's noon Are shorter than this last. And it is nothing. Only the lusty heroes And those summer's sweet with.lust And wine and roses fear. The children do not; Theirs is young Adam's innocence. The o l d do not; they welcome the earth's suction And the bone's extinction into rock. The image of your beauty growing green. Your bone's adolescence I could not know. Come of your middle year;s, your July loins. I found you strong and tough as guava scrub. Hoeing the growing. reaping the ripe corn; Kneading and thumping the thick dough for bread And now you've bowed, bent over to the ground; An old gnarled tree. all her bows drooped Upon the cross of death. you crawl up Your broken stairs like Golgotra. and dead bones Clutch at your dying bones . I do not mourn, but all my love Praise life's revival through the eternal year. I see death broken at each seed's rebirth. My poems labour from your blood As all my mind burns on our peasant stock That cannot be consumed till time is killed. Oh. time's run past your hands made bread To this decrepitude; but in the stream Of time I watch the stone, the image Of my mother making bread my boyhood long. Mossed by the crusty memories of bread. o may my art grow whole as her hands' craft. I AM THE ARCHIPELAGO I am the archipelago hoPe Would mould into dominion; each hot green island Buffetted. broken by the press of tides And all the tales come mocking me Out of the slave plantations wherelgrubbed... 1
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Yam and cane; where heat and hate sprawled down Among the ,cane-my sister sired without Love or law. In that gross bed was bred The third estate of, colour. And now My language, history and my names are dead And buried with my tribal soul. And now I drown in the groundswell of poverty No love will quell. I am the shanty town. Banana, sugarcane and cotton man; Economies are soldered with my sweat Here, everywhere; in hate's dominion; In Congo, Kenya. in free. unfree America. I herd in my divided skin Under a monpmaniac sullen sun Disnomia deep in artery and matrow. I bum the tropic texture from my hair; Marry the mongrel woman or the white; Let m:y black spinster sisters tend the church, Earn meagre wages. mate illegally. Breed secret bastards. murder them in womb; Their fate is written in unwritten law. The vogue of colour hardened into custom In the tradition of the slave plantation. The cOck. the totem of his craft. his luck, The obeahman infects me to my heart Although I wear my Jesus on my: breast And bum a holy candle for my saint. I am a shaker and a shouter and a myal man; My voodoo passion swings sweet chariots low My manhood died on the imperial wheels That bound and ground too many generations; From pain and terror and ignominy I cower in the island ot my skin. The hot unhappy jungle of my spirit Broken by my haunting foe my fear, The jackal after centuries of subjectioa. But now the inteIlect must o utrun time Out of my lost, through all man's future years Challenging Atalanta for my life, To die or live a man in history. My totem also on the human earth. o drummers, fall to silence in my blood You thrum against the moon; break up the rhetoric Of these poems I must speak. 0 seas. o Trades. drive wrath from destinations. 55
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HOMESTEAD seven cedars break the From the thin gabies of my house: I know the green demoniC rage When gales are tra,pP:ed in their thick foliage But weathers tum, drought returns, The great sun bums the green to ochre Dry racking winds knQck the boughs bare Till they are tragic stands of sticks Pitiful in pitiless noons But know dusk's bountY and the moon's. Beyond the cedars there are fields Where one man sweated out his daY$ Weary!ng his stubborn bOne. He'd bought thick woodland for his own. Set bis axe of hope upon it With his rugged bones of courage And left his sons an heritage. This heavy drudgery for a man But plants his spirit in the earth That blooms no fragrance of bis worth. So I write his epitaph In his own blood of hope and faith: "His life was siJllple peasant bread, "He wrote his memoirs in bis bea
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Who are not told. but tell their breed Through history's book. as passive. as Unkillable as common grass; Whose temperate and patient soul The heavy loam of human earth Feeds woods of wisdom. art and faith. POEM He plucked a burning stylUS from the sun And wrote her name across the endless skies And wrote her name upon the waxing moon And wrote her name among the thronging stars. H the pale moon forgets he will remember, Lovers remember though love's ghost sigh in the sun Or whimper in despair in the large dark. The seas are sorrows And the seas accept the moon's dark tragedies. The seas reflect the yearning of the stars. His heart is weary as the endless seas. His soul is wearier than the flowing wave, o dark tide of no hope. o blood of tears still sings the SUD. No cloud can blind the memory of the moon Or blot the legend from the ageless stars. W. ADOLPHE ROBERTS ON A MONUMENT TO MARll Cuba. dishevelled. naked to the waist. Springs Up erect from the dark earth and screatm Her joy in liberty. The metal gleams Where her chains broke. Magnificent her haste To charge into the battle and to taste Revenge on the oppressor. Thus she seems. But she were powerless the dreams Of'him who stands above, unsmiling. chaste. Yes, over Cuba on her jubilant way Broods the Apostle, Jose Julian Marti 57
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He shaped her course of gIory;and the day The guns fill'St spoke he died to make her free. That night a meteor flamed in splendid loss Between the North Star and the Southern Cross. A. J. SEYMOUR SUN IS A SHAPELY FIRE Sun is a shapely fire tuming in air Fed by white springs and earth's a powerless sun. I have the sun today deep in my bones, Sun's in my blood, light heaps beneath my skin. Sun is a badge of power pouring in A darkeriing star that rains its glory down. The trees and I are cousins. Those tall trees That tier their branches in the hollow sky And, high up, hold small hands of leaves Up to divinity, their name for sun And mine. We're cousins. Sheet light, white power comes falling through the air. All the light here is eqmH-vertical-Plays magic with green leaves and, touching, wakes The small sweet springs of breathing scent and bloom That break out on the boughs, And sun has made Civilisation flower from a river's mud With his gossamer rays of steel. II These regions wear sharp shadows from deep suns. The sun gives back her earth its ancient right The gift of violence. Life here is ringed with the half of the sun's wheel And limbs and passions grow in leaps of power Suddenly flowing up to touch the arc. Upon this energy kin to the sun To learn the trick of discipline and slow /lkiU, Squaring in towns upon an empty map Hitching rivers to great water wheels, Taming the fire to domesticity.
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m Sun is a shapely fire floating in air Watched by God's eye. The distance makes it cool With the slow circling retinue of worlds Hanging upon it. Indifferently near Move other stars with their attendant groups Keeping and breaking pace in the afternoon Till the enormous ballet music fades And dies away. Sun is a shapely fire Turning in air Sun's in my blood THERE RUNS A DREAM There runs a dream of perished Dutch plantations In these Guiana rivers to the sea. Black waters, rustling through the vegetation That towers and tangles banks, run silently Over lost stellings where the craft once rode Easy before trim dwellings in the sun And fields of indigo would float out broad To lose the eye right on the horizon. These rivers know that strong and quiet men Drove back a jungle gave Guiana root Against the shock of circumstance, and then History moved down river leaving free The forest to creep back, foot by quiet foot And overhang black waters to the sea. NAME POEM. Beauty about us in the breathe of names Known to us all, but murmured over sofly Woven to breath of peace. H but a wind blows, all their beauty wakes Kwebanna on the Waini-Indian words And peace asleep within the syllables. Cabacaburi and the Rupununi Reverence is guest in that soft hush of names. S9
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For battle music and the roll of drums, The shock and break of bodies locked in combat The Tramen Cliff above Imbaimadai. Guiana, Waini are cousin water words ..... The Demerary, Desakepe and Courantyne Flow centuries before strange tongues bewitch Their beauty into common county names. Through aU the years before the Indians came Rocks at Tumatumari kept their grace, And Tukeit, Amatuk and Waratuk Trained ear and eye for thundering Kaieteur And there are mountain tops that take tbe sun Jostling shoulders with seaward-eyed Roraima .... These Amerindian names hold ancient sway Beyond the European fingers reaching, Forever reaching in but nearer coast Words born upon Dutch tongues live in our speech. The sentinel that was Kykoveral Beterverwagting, V1issengen and Stabroek And sonorous toll of bells in Vergenoegen. For French remembrance, Le Ressouvenir, The silent and great tomb of an exile's anguish, Le Repentir-that city of the dead . . Simple the heritage of English names Hid in Adventure, Bee Hive, Cove and John, And Friendship, Better Hope, and Land of Canaan Garden of Eden and ... so Paradise. Out west are places blessed by Spanish tongues Santa Rosa white chapel on a hill ..... Beauty about us in the breathe of names, If but a wind blows, all their beauty wakes. TOMORROW BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE Ignorant, lllegitimate, Hungry sometimes. Living in tenement yards Dying in burial societies The people is a lumbering giant That holds history in his hand. 60
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The efficient engineers dam the cbnserVancies Design the canals and the sluices The cbemists extract their sugar to the ton The millers service the padi into rice And tbe beavy lorries and unpunctual ships Bring ground provisions from the farms. But always tbe people is a bero, a vast army Making the raw material for skill and machines to work upon. They frequent the cinemas Throng the races and tbe dance halls Pocket small wages with a sweating brow And ragged clothes; But it is their ignorant, iilegitimate bands That shape history They grow the cane and the rice and tile ground provisiQns They dig the gold and the diamonds and the bauxite They cut the forests and build the bridges and the roads and the wall to keep out the sea. History is theirs, Because history doesn't belong To the kings, and the governors and the legislaturo. History basically Is the work men do with their hands When they battle with the earth And grow food and dig materials For other people's profits and other people's skiU. And other people know it too. The labour leaders and the politicians Shake fists to rouse the rabble But that giant, the people, They say yes or no to the proposition Chinese running their groceries and their laundry places Portuguese controlling the dry goods and tbe pawnshops Indians Ilaving every half of a shilling Cutting in canefields Breaking their backs to grow riee. Africans tramping aback f(1)r the Running the falls "topside" for fabulous diamonds, Becoming the teachers, the policemeq. and the Civil Servants They are all heroes. They make history They are the power in the land. 61'
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ABd the womeD' work palientfy along with the men And look after the children as best they can. And the children grow Force their way out of the slums into the professions And stand up in the legislature. To-day they hope But to-morrow belongs to the people. To-morrow they will put power behind their brow And get skill in their hands To-morrow They will make a hammer to smash the slums And build the schOols. .. Like a River the people hold history in their hands And To-morrow belongs to them PHILIP M. SHERLOCK POCOMANIA Long Mountain, rise. Lift you' shoulder. blot the moon. Black the stars. hide the skies, Long Mountain. rise, lift you' shoulder high. Black of skin and white of gown Black of night and candle light White against the black of trees And altar white against the gloom, Black of mountain high up there Long Mountain, rise, Lift you' shoulder. blot the moon. Black the stars, black the sky. Africa among the trees Asia with her mysteries Weaving white in flowing gown Black Long Mountain looking down Sees the shepherd and his flock Dance and sing and wisdom mock, Dance and sing and falls away All the civilised today Dance and sing and fears let ioose; 62
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Here the ancient gods that choose Man for victim, man for hate Man for sacrifice to fate Hate and fear and madness black Dance before the altar white Comes the circle closer still Shepherd weave your pattern old Africa among the trees Asia with her mysteries. Black of night and white of gown White of altar, black of trees "Swing de circle wide again Fall and cry me sister now Let de spirit come again Fling away de flesh an' bone Let de spirit have a home" : Grunting low and in the dark White of gown and circling dance Gone to-day and all control Now the dead are in control Power of the past returns Africa among the trees Asia with her mysteries. Black the stars, hide the sky Lift you' shoulder, blot the moon, Long Mountain rise. M. Q. SMITH MELLOW OBOE The wind breathes a mellow oboe in my ear I from the seas of life Have filled my cup with foam. The tension of Time's waves has broken on These cliffs The menace is resolved in foam. o beautiful o beautiful The cruelty
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Soon the suave night's surrender And the mass music of the -dark Falls fragment into foam To apprehend the foam the waves declared And drink the milk pure from the fann of Time Nebular and luminous The stars the peaks achieve Found foam of peaks and stars. So bracket the stars with bubbl e Fill baskets of white berries from the sea All is a rich donation The waves are lines of epic The sea a deep quotation The foam the complete poem. I hear the sea's half-breath half-moan Sweep in fugues through me And the wind breathes an oboe in my ear. I HAROLD M. 1ELEMAQUE ROOTS Who danced Saturday mornings Between immortelle roots And played about his palate The mellowness of cocoa beans, Who felt the hint of the cool river In his blood, The hint of the cool river Chill and sweet. Who followed curved shores Between two seasons. Who took stones in his hands Stones white as milk Examining the island in his hands; And shells, Shells as pink as frog's eyes From the sea Who saw the young corn sprout With April rain WhQ measured the young meaning
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By looking at the moon. And walked roads a footpath's width, And calling, Cooed with mountain doves Come morning time Who breathed mango odour From his polished cheek Who followed the cus-cus weeders In their rich performance. Who heard the bamboo flute wailing Fluting, wailing, And watched the poui golden Listening. Who with the climbing sinews Climbed the palm To where the wind plays most. And saw a chasmed pilgrimage Making agreement for his clean return Whose heaviness Was heaviness of dreams, From drowsy gifts To those POEM Who lifted into shape The huge stones of the pyramid; Who formed the Sphinx of the desert. And bid it Look down upon the centuries like yesterday: Who walked lithely On the banks of the Congo, And heard the deep rolling moan Of the Niger; And morning and evening Hit the brave trail of the forest With the lion and the elephant; To those Who, when it came that they should leave Their urns of History behind, Left only with a sad song in their hearts ; And burst forth into soulful singing As bloody pains of toil Strained like a hawser at their hearts . ... To those, hail ..... 6S
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H. A. VAUGHAN DARK VOICES There's beauty in these voices. Do not base Your judgment purely on the affrighted street. The howling mob, the quarrel. or repeat Your scathing strictures on the market place. There's beauty always urgent in this race That baffles bondage from its sure retreat Of song and laughter. Loud and low and sweet There's beauty in these voices, by God's grace. Detect two lovers underneath the stars, Hear the lone worker as he works and sings, The Christmas choirs whose joyous martial bars Go forth to greet the new born King of Kings, And. after this life's numerous frets and jars, The friends who mourn the end of terrene things. REVELATION Tum sideways now and let them see What loveliness escapes the schools, Then tum again. and smile. and be The perfect answer to those fools Who always prate of Greece and Rome. "The face that launched a thousand ships," And such like things. but keep tight lips For burnished beauty nearer home. Tum in the sun. my love. my love! What palm.like grace! What poise! I swear I prize these dusky limbs above My life. What laughing eyesl What gleaming hairl DEREK WALCOTI THE YELLOW CEMETERY '7bey are alive and well somewhere The smallest sprout shows there is really no death And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the eod to arrest it." Walt Whitman All grains are the ash to ashes drowsing in the morning, Wearina white stone. I passed them, not thankfuller to be
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Their living witness not noisy in salt like the near sea. Because they are sp a ded to the dirt. our drowning. As lovely as the living. and safer. to the bay's green mourners They will unkeening bones and they are happy. Lost the candle and censer mystery tale. the swung smoke of adorners Of dying. Could the y sp e ak more than bramble. they'd be One in the language of the sun and the bibleling froth, Their now bread is broken stone their wine the absent blood They gave to days of nails. It is enough And greater is no grace, no surplice more serviceable than the lap and hood Of the seasons that grew them, and now mother them to sleep And you alive. speak not of the unlucky dead. the sunless eyes rotten Under downs and saddles in a kingdom of worms. Speak of the luckless living. that are gnawed by a misbegotten Moon and memory; It is a blessing past bounds to miss the dooms Of the vertical fathom. at each suncrow To know no anguish. cool in cloths tones that flow The sleep in the bone, all weathers. But we, each Flapping boast of the crowing sun turn in our linen graves, Face stale mornings. old faces. but these dead on the beach Are joyed at the dawn's blood skyed on their dearth of days. We cocky populations fouling the fallow plains of heaven ; Shall find perfection in a cemetery under a hill. For we have suffered so long. that death shall make aU even There shall the love grow again that once we would kill. This is no place for the cater of herbs and honey. for beads, Here arc: water. crops seabirds. and yet here do not be brave. Seek no fames. and do not too often pray to keep alive. Against the brittle wick of wishes the wind in the clock strives And wins Was not your father such? Gay in the burning faith of himself, but melted to forgetting? Thank time for joys. but be not thankful overmuch. The sun a clot of the wounded sky is setting, Delve no heart in the sound of your soul, a man's speech burns And is over; the tears melt. colden and stales the tallow. And the story of your ash to ashes breath that the wind learns, The bushes from your eyes will tell in a deeper yellow 67
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II And there at sea, under the wave The sea-dead the legendary brave Under the windmane d horses of the sea Float the bulged trampled dead, nudged by whales ; Their wicks windkilled too, by salty gales And they w e re so braver, less alarmed than we. For we want to run who do not want to drown where There is no an gel or angelus or another s helphand; But they too ride easy a nd the nunnery of brown ha i r Of the white girl of waJls, shall be no more in the pardoner sand Black man' s denial. Heart l e t us love all, the weeds That feed the sea-herds, miracler than man's tallest deeds For here the living are blinder th a n the dead, ah Look a rainbo w s evencoloured wakes g l ory throu g h the clouds and Breasts sea and hill and cemetery in warning, And the chained horses thunder white no more adorning The harbour that grow s truculent at t h e sevenhued sky A canoe scuds home quickly, and indigo reigns Praise these b u t a sk n o m ore the meani n g of m::lUrning Than you ask a moral from the seven glory of the clouds, and Go slowly to the hilI as the gale breaks crazy on the loud sand. Do not talk of d ying y o u sa y but all men are de a d 0 s i ck In the brain and rib-hollow rooms The candles of the eye burn and shor ten and how quick The fine girl sleep s in her grave of h air t he gra s shair tombs, o look at the sane low populations of the democratic dead, HawaII are doomed to a dome of mud, all brought to book Believing in a w orld for the perverse saint and the holy crook Love children n o w for th e sun will batter the i r thinklessness For there, if place H e walks, who was a lifelong child. And when the sun i s spearing them in growth, pray, There is the kingdom of heaven in the tears of a child. away The trees, alive in a wind or g e nerat i ons, spin a t e rror of grains In the air, in the blu e and froth of the weather the branch rains Yellow on the graves We, the raiser s of a God against the hand, Wonder who is made or maker for the God our ancestors learned, Moses of terror, burns in no bushes, We pray only when sea s are turned Angry, and the wild wind rushes. And love and death we cannot understand The signatures of a lost Heaven remain, The beauty of the arch, the nature not sun not rain 68
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We want our God to be. And yet were He scanned We the long builders of beyond this flying breath would look Beyond the written Heavens, the wide open sea, the land like a green book, Would find the Author and the Author's purpose. III A swallow falls, and perhaps the sole spoken prayer Is the hand of a leaf crossing the cold curled claws. Where is the God of the swallows, is He where Lives the one whom you flew young from, who all life was yours'! And yet for all these gifts, the gift that I can pray, The mountain music, the pylon words, the painting, they are Enough, and may be all, for they add grace by day And night give tears as harshly as a telling star. Were there nothing, and this the only Life, a man has stilI to save the cliche of his soul. to live With, I will say it grace, to atone for the Sins that all the worlds awoke before he ailed alive, Climb there, go to the hill where another Sun is warning, That the wicks weaken and in the halls of the hearts un, love, For love is the stone speech that outlasts our ash and mourning. A CITY'S DEATH BY FIRE After that hot gospeller had levelJed all but the churched sky, I wrote the tale by tallow of a city's death by fire, Under a candle's eye that smoked in tears, I Wanted to tell in more than wax of faiths that were snapped like wire. All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales, Shocked at each waJl that stood on the street like a liar, Loud was the bird-rocked sky and all the clouds were bales Torn open by looting and white in spite of the fire; By the smoking sea, where Christ walked, I asked why Should a man wax tears when his wooden world fails. In town leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths ; To a boy who walked aU day, each leaf was a green '. Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails, Blessing the death and the baptism by fire. 69
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AS JOHN TO PATMOS As John to Patmos, among the rocks and the blue live air hour.jed His heart to peace, as here surrounded By the strewn silver on waves, the wood's crude hair, the rounded Breasts of the milky bays, palms, flocks, and the green and dead Leaves, the sun's brass coin on my cheek, where Canoes brace th e sun's strength. John in that bleak air So am I welcomed richer by these blue scapes Greek there So I will voyage no more from home, may I speak here. This island is heaven away fr o m the dustblown blood of cities See the curve of bay, watch the straggling flower, pretty is The winged sound of trees, the sparse powdered sky when lit is The night. For beauty has surrounded These black children, and freed them of homeless ditties As John to Patmos, among each love-leaping air, o slave, soldier, worker under red trees sleeping, hear What I swear now as John did To praise lovelong the living and the brown dead DANIEL WILLIAMS OVER HERE Over here where our iS' lands Puncture the leaden sea into a chain, And our wish inconstant like the pilloried Sun fatigued by the clouds. here where pain Is narc o tic blunt and duB, frenzied We have hoped. Not for the nurturing of a million Varied wish or the relish of a lotus Pleasure; not for the temporary brazen Triumph the coin has taught or the sick Culture which understand s only the voice Of duped builders. Rather the ubiquitous call of the river For the salt panting of the sea, rather The proud turn of the leaf's neck For the hot kiss of the sun and the weak Reach of the hand for the strong grasp Of the comrade 70
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For here we have loved The wet mud clinging the hoemen's feet Here in the soil our blood is green and In our wine the vine is parched with the Heat of our hope; yet untamed is the spark Of desire strong in y o ung strength. Time for the harp Of history, and in the east dawn brings Her dower of light and flings it to her Husband day; glance in the west the golden Egg wiIl break into a myriad suns and people Our horizon. Look at the land, the p s alms, Singing for our sons beyond the fever of the years; Look at the trees, the prayers, Curtesying before the sacred scribbling of the wind, And the clouds, the white precipitate of the sky Like incense on the altar . MILTON WILLIAMS OH! PRAHALAD DEDICATED DAY On the e v e of this, Prahl ad Dedicated Day, Abeer drench'd you conie to me, Oh Indian girl With your face and hands all turned crimson With the previous colour of your dress und5stinguishable, And alI your form reverberating an atmosphere of festivity. You come and you sit and you sing for me, playing on the jaal The golden sound of your voice sending sweet stinging darts to my heart Then leaving it in exquisite jets clothed on wings of delight The very voice felIed star-apples and sapodiJlas from : their trees The very voice ripened the cherries and gooseberries all around. I took you and placed you under the cherry tree On its crest a red breast was warbling her song. Oh the sacredness of the sight! I dare not utter a word to you For suddenly it came upon me like the wind ruffling the trees This was the very meaning of "Phagwah." 71
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* PRA Y FOR RAIN In skasons of drought the dry land cracks turn from green to pale yellow, On streets the asphalt reflects The furious energy of its crystalled-burden "It is seasonal," the people say, "Pray for rain ." Drought is not only an affectation By nature to men and crops It is the living lie of all of us : Young men green-vitalled In industry Withering to absurd anonymities o comrades, perpetual drought is our heresy! Like garbage on the downheap We are piled: forced to exhaust Ourselves, be divested of all our purity Crack, decay and bum. **** 72
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FICTION, T ,RA,VElO:GUE, HISTORY CHRISTMAS IN THE NINETEEN-TWENTIES P.H. DALY When one says that Dickens invented the English Christmas one does not mean, of course, that he created the ma n y forms and symbols with which Christmas Day has ever since been sensuously as against spiritually enjoyed. In Pickwick Papers he gave us the exuberant Christmas of Dingley Dell; and in The Christmas Carol, one of his five famous books on Christmas he drew the paradox which is the keystone Df Christmas itself: that one has reaSDn fDr mirth even though one lives in s qualDr, prDvided one's beart is warm. He gave us the paradox of Ebenezer Scrooge whO' thDUght Christmas a nuisance, yet fell under its magical spell. Dickens did nDt create the tradi t ional forms and symbols of the English Christmas, which, indeed had been lying ,in disdain and disarray, with the stigma of Saturnalian opprobrium, long be f ore he w a s born These fDrms and symbols of the English Christmas-yule logs holly and mistletoe boughs, turkey and goose, plum pudding blazing blue with lighted brandy pantomimes and harlequins, the Christmas Oratorio pea l ing from a snowbound church are older than Christianity itself. One recalls for the criticism which I shal] make later on the tendency of West Indian novelists to be ashamed of their survivals. and their failure to find pleasure in proletariat idiosyncrasy at Christ mastime--that many of these forms and s y mbols are survivals of the great Roman feast of Saturnalia. wh i ch was ce l e b rated at the time of the year which is our Christmastime and in which women dressed as men and men as women, and the slaves were the masters and the masters the slaves. Dickens sublimated these survivals, as an art-form and made them acceptable by the Ebenezer Scrooges who controlled the new, urbanised and utilitarian civilization which was sweeping over nineteenth-century England. B y the peculiar brio of his genius, he succeeded in making them reasonably imperishable The comic Dickens found what no West Indian novelist has yet foupd pleasure in pro letariat idiosyncrasy at Ch'ristmastime. Or is it that the West Indies have not yet produced humorous novelists with the appetite to enjo y comic stunts like Mother Sally and the centipede band? Novelists to extend the function of the novel to rescuing our ancestral West I ndian Christmas from decay; to make Christmas as an art-form. a time Df historic harJequinade and moral rehabilita tion? Because of this convention of neglect by West Indian novelists-this ghost of the parvenu in the West Indian novel-one fears that the ancestral West Indian Christmas is in danger of decay. One sees, with dismay a cracking and splintering of the s ocial mould of nineteen-twenties on which one's ances tral Christmas had been cast. One suspects that this convent i on of neglect is due to the nimbus of national consciousness which surrounds the heads of some West Indian novelists putting them many of whom are from workingc1ass famiJ,ies, on their guard against showing any appetite for proletariat idiosyncrasy, 73
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or any sympathy for our ancestral survivals. And the vanishing Guianese Christmas, as an ancestral institution, is built largely on proletar ; iat foundations. Any public notice of such an institution by some of our novel.ists becomes an affront to national ambitions and West Indian nationhood. It is like a newly rich scullery-maid snobbing a poor relation. It is social parvenuism. Oearly, therefore, one sees the need for throwing up protective walls around what it left of this ancestral Christmas of ours; assailed, on the one hand, by the inteIlectually respectable and socially apologetic West Indian novel, and, on the other. by the urbani sing of our rural homestead the last ditch of the ancestral Christmas-through development programmes and so called 'cultivated' habits of thinking and acting. One cannot look to the West Indian novel, at its present stage of development, to provide these pro tective waIls One cannot look to colonial legislators to provide these walls either. For over colonial legislatures the same haze of national consciousness hovers; and, in the case of Guiana, it has reached such a stage that legislation has banished the masqueraders to areas outside the city. The West Indian nQvelist is squeamish about enjoying his proletariat pleasures, such as the centipede band and the Mother Sally. He may approach these things in a spirit of censure or contempt. but the parvenu in him warns a g ainst approaching them with a good appetite. To have an appetite is to relish, and one dare not relish these things. One must keep up European appearances. When the focal point of the West Indian novel shifts from London to Kinl!ston. Georgetown, or Port of Spain, one may be oneself. One may then relish, as Dickens did, pro letariat idiosyncrasy and tribal survivals at Christmastime. Yet what is there for one to be ashamed of in the ancestral Guianese Christmas of the nineteen-twenties?-one's Childhood Christmas! Those were the Christmases of the fantasicaIly decorated Mother Sally or Congojumbie gigantically tall-I can remember seeing one lady as tall as twenty feet !roUing on her barrel through street after street. To roll on a barre1 for hours along a street, oftimes turning sharp corners, flouncing on one's mobile stage, mimicing and pantomiming wriggling one's hips and propelling oneself, yet retaining one's balance, it a feat of end urance and art. A tribute to the barbarian energy of our ancestors! The extinction-I write the word with a heartacheof the Mother Sa]]v and the centipede band, means that our Christmases are becoming less and more artificial: poorer in historic pageantry. Mother Sally was an expression of history in harlequinade. Nowadays one almost finds oneself observing an imported Christmas. instead of the real. rumbustious thing. Our dictionary of co]]oquial terms too. is going to the dogs. In the nineteen twenties one called an unusua]]v tall overdressed pirouetting female a 'regu lar Mother Sally'-a censure which never failed as a corrective. The nineteen-twenties were the Christmases when masqueraders were artists at wiggling and rolling their hips, and few people know that this sort of dance was a throw-back to the Sex Dance of the slaves. The Sex Dance, the Comfu Dance, the dance of the masqueraders one can trace, in them, an un74
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broken lineage. The centipedo bands, strumming out their torrid, dynamic disharmonies, were offshoots of the African slave dance The masqueraders, snapping their fingers as they wiggled and rolled their hips, used a language as clear and concise as any spoken tongue. Few know that this finger-snapping goes back to the ingenuity of the slaves who used it as a language to defeat the Dilution System. The Dilution System, as I have seen it described was the mixing in the gangs of slaves taken from various tribes, and speaking different dialects to prevent them understanding one another and plotting revolts The slaves fell back on the device of snapping-fingers (the beating of tom-toms having been iIlegalised) as a language. It was a rude form of morse; and, as the continuing slave revolts showed i t finally rendered the Dilution System innocuous as a conversation curb. All that is left of these survivals now is a memory-a terrain which we can enter only i n imagination: a street-corner where Mother Sally's head knocks against the street-lamp shade; where the reality-or illusionof vanished ePQch can be recollected only in silence and tranquillity; a sheltered niche where the measureless amplitude of the mind can recreate the Past. To the Past, then let us go. With what deep stirrings one heard the fist drum-beats and the rattle of kettle drums, the c!ash of cymbal s and the shr : ek of flutes, the screech of conch shells and the deep baying of the horns as the masqueraders came out to practise on the first day of No v emb er. No st ee lband today can hit one as hard in the emotional solar plexus as that centipede band, bringing with it lost echoes of the tom-toms on the old slave plantation The practised 'in the raw'to wear Chri s tmas costume durin g practice would be to spoil the dramatic suspense-the real essence of the ancestral Christmas. At the street-corner where in the nineteen-twenties, big black beetles whirled under the light, while hundreds of others lay stunned on the ground, the bands beat out their merry melodies. Their appearance was the s ignal for cottage folk-urban Cus todians of the Ancestral Christmas-to 'strip the house'. Stripping the house could have been done in a day, but the dramatic suspense must not be disturbed. So the strippin g was drawn out over a month Stripping meant tearing the carpet from the floor tearing paper from wall s tearing carpets from chairs teariflg down the hanging-lamp. Having tom down all movable property from portico and drawin g -room one turned one's attention to the dining-room as the second week in November dawned. Nam e s of furni ture now forgott en-the What-n ot, the dinne r -wagon the w a gonette, the matapee the conquintay-box, the grinding-jug. the old easy-chair the cowpi s tle, banging high over the wagonette all fell unde r bli s tering siege of washing soda and soap, borax and vinegar, sandpaper and broken glass in a frenzy of scrub bing, remo,,iflg all traces of last December's varnish and getting them nicely in the nude to be varnished again In the third week of November the stripping lunacy wall extended to bathroom, dry closet, kitchen, fowl pens, dog kennel, rat traps, and the top of the water vat. in a confusion of scrubbing, soaping, sandpap e ring, bumping, hammering, rasping gasping and pushing, which rival led the pandemonium of the band at one's favourite street corner. 75
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Slowly, grimly methodically, with the precIsIon of Scottish bagpipers performing a solemn slow march, the campaign w as ex t ended to the bedroom as November's last week came on. The big, four-poster maho g any bed, an in t e rior skyscraper per c hed on its four blo cks, four feet h igh, was pulled down pulled to pieces, peeped at for bugs sniffed at where tlIe b l ood of bugs stank, purified with sandpaper, and made ready fO f varnishing. Now the entire cottage, confused and topsy-turvy, lay in a state of prostration-and so lay many of the occupants! The dawning of December was the signal to 'set' one's homemade wines. Winemaking, as a ritual was one of the most important ceremonies in creat ing the correct, nostalgic climate of scents necessary to the ance s tral Christmas. Jamoon wine banana wine, lime wine, orange wine, soursop wine, rice wine, corn wine, gooseberry wine each wine was set in its own win e jar; each jar had a piece of black crepe over its head, all resembling a team of condemned men with the death cap ove' r their faces r e ady for the gallows. Sho ulder to shoul d er, back to the wall, faces in the sun, the wine jars stood, proclaiming to all visitors that Christmas was near. After wine 'setting' beer making Gin g er beer sorrel beer, currant beer and 'fly', each beer to its jar; shoulder to shoulder, backs to the wall, faces in the sun. As the second week in December starts one began the Rubric of the Pepperpot. Into grandmother's twelve-gallon iron pot went the ingredients of the pepperpot: cow heel, cowface, pigface, breast, oxtail, pigtail, every conceivable kind of meat went ritualistically into the pot. The scent of wine fomenting. t' 1 e scent of beer, the scent of pepperpot being stewed the scent of Liberian coffe e beans being parched-it was a combination of pleasant aromas which now per vade one's cottage as the calendar reads-December 15, 1925. On December 15, one 'set' one's rice for luck. Two dozen pots and pans were filled with padi and water and left in the dew e v ery night. The daRk scent of padi soaked in water was added to the scent of wine beer pepperpot. and freshly ground Liberian coffee. But a fourth pun g en t scent was to commin gle with them all, in this fast mobilization of nostalgic aromas. Trns was the scent of varnish. One hardly smells the scent of varnish now One smells furniture polish and furniture oil, as the ancestral Christm a s s lowly retreats before new fangled refinements. Anyway varnishing usually began in complete reverse to the stripping of house. That is, while one strip p ed from portico to rat trap one varnished from rat trap to portico. Why? A continuation of the process of dramatic suspense. The portico and the drawing-room were the show-pieces of the Christmas decoration; and the show pieces in the ancestral Christmas. like the climax to a good short story, must be left for the last. Now one's cotta g e was a nest of nostal g ic scents, noticeable as far away as one's favourite street corner, where Mother Sally's head knocked against the street lamp shade. With December 24, came cakemaking, souse-making, and blackpudding making; doughboy-making, cornpone-making, and conki-making. Ah! This 76
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was a woman's day. It was stimulating to see them at work. 'Picking' their currants and 'picking' their prunes, and grinding them with the old ale jug on a slab of marble grindstone. No modern mill for these cottage folk of the nine teen-twenties. As they ground, they hipped and dipped, now left, now right, over and under, in a flurry of bipwork which rivalled the masqueraders outside. As Christmas day dawned, the last nail was hammered and the last blind went up in the portico. The air in one's cottage was now charged with scents; no, not scent s charged with the anaesthetics of Christmas: Fresh varnish and freshly ground coffee pepperpot and homemade wines and beer; blackpudding and s ouse and ginger beer and doughboy. One inhaled deeply, contendedly And, if one was tired, one sank down on grandmother's ottoman lulled into a haze by the anaesthetics of Christmas, to listen to the bands, at the street corner where Mother Sally knocked her head against the lamp shade. 77
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THE STORY OF KYKOVERAL by VERB T. DALY KYKOVERAL today is our oldest historical relic, and it should be visited by all who have pride of country in their hearts. Its name was doubtless an inspiration, for it "Looked" or "Kyked-over-al" the waters of the Essequebo, Mazaruni and Cuyuni. Provided we have sufficient leaven of humility in our hearts, we would do ourselves no harm to take as our watch-word "Kyk-over-al!" It has now been established beyond reasonable doubt that Kykoveral was founded in 1616. The trustworthiness of Major John Scott on whose authority this statement was first made, was once contemptuously denied; but Dr. George Edmunston in a series of learned articles published in the English Historical Review, has shown, by comparison with Dutch and Spanish contemporary records, that Scott is entirely to be trusted. By close examination and careful deduction Dr. Edmunston h as recon structed for us the story of the founding of Kykoveral. Early in the seventeenth century there was at the Spanish settlement of San Thome on the Orinoco a Dutchman by the name of Adrian Groenewegen. He was the Spanish factor at San Thome, but when a change of policy had come about in the little settlement, Groenewegen quit the Spanish service and went back to his old masters in Holland. He was at once engaged by Peter Courteen and Jan de Moor ('nd put in charge of an expedition to Essequebo, where on his arrival with a mixed force of Englishmen and Zeelanders in two ships and a gaJiot, he built a fort and established a settlement on the island of Kykoveral at the water-meet of the Essequebo, Mazaruni and Cuyuni rivers. Until Dr. Edmunston took up the cud!!d in defence of Scott (who was a notorious swindler in his private life) every bit of the above was discredited. But the acceptance of Scott's st<:>ry has now shown how false are earlier accounts which tell of the founding of Kykoveral between 1581 and 1598 and the finding of an old fort of alleged Portuguese construction. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was formed. Its main aim being the capture of Brazil. which belonged to the Portuguese its first notable act was to send an expedition of twenty-six ships t o raid San Salvador. It is probable that official attention was not paid to Essequebo before 1623, when the ZeeJand Chamber began to show special interest in the post. Jacob Canyn. a ship's captain. was the Company's first a g ent. He contracted to serve for three year:;:. but in 1626 we find him asking to be released. It is to Jan Van der Goes must go the honour of being the leader of the first official occupation of Essequebo. In 1895 the question as to the respective boundaries o f the RepUblic of Venezuela and the Crown Colony of British Guiana caused a world-wide stir; 78
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but war between the United States of America (acting for and on behalf of the Republic of Venezuela) and Great Britain was averted when an arbitration treaty was signed between the British Ambassador and Senhor Andrade at Washington on February 2,1897. Working on both sides were some of the ablest professors in the world, and one of the difficulties they had to face was to decide which of the two accounts of the founding of Kykoveral was to be accepted Scott's, or that which could be gleaned from the minutes of the West India Company. In the American case. Scott's account was treated with contempt; and in the decision handed down by the tribunal which met in Paris, it is clear that Scott was discredited. The apparently irreconcilable difficulty was this: If Groenewegen in 1616 had established a settlement why was it necessary for the West India Company to establish another sometime between 1623 and 1626. What had happened to Groenewegen's settlement? Had it failed? By close analysis of the documents which have come down to us Dr. Edmunston has shown that the official occupation of Kykoveral did not disturb the settlement under Groenewegen. Undoubtedly the old settlers must have viewed the new ones with suspicion, and vice versa; but on the whole the fortunes of the Company's trading post hardly affected the Courteen's colony. How reasonable this conclusion is may easily be seen when one begins to read of attempts made by the West India Company to suppress the activities of a body of private traders. We find in 1634, for example, Abraham van Pere, and the Zeeland Chamber instructing their deputies who were being sent to a meeting of the *Nineteen, to request, and even insist, that no colonists or other persons sha1l be at liberty to navigate to the Wild Coast (Guiana) except this Chamber and Confrater van Pere alone"; and this request having failed we find the Zeeland Chamber the next year passing a resolution to the effect that "the trade to the wild coast shall be done by the Company alone and by no private individuals." In 1635 the Company's settlement was in such a bad way that the Zeeland Chamber's Committee of Commerce and Finance sat to decide whether or not it was profitable to keep it. At that time there were in the Company's employ ment not more than thirty men, whose main business was that of exchanging the articles of European make for annatto dye, which was then in great demand in Europe for use in the manufacture of cheese and other products. Presumably, the report of the Chamber's Committee was favourable, for the official occupation of Essequebo continued. The discovery that sugar-cane was growing in the Colony may have been responsible for this decision, for it is about this time (1637) that we find the first mention of sugar in the minutes of the Zeeland Chamber. Executive of the Dutch West India Company 79
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But if official Essequebo was in a precarious condition, the same cannot be said of the settlement under Groenewegen. In 1624 it was visited by one Jesse de Forest and in 1627 by Captain Plowell, the discoverer of Barbados. Plowell's visit was for the ostensible purpose of obtaining seeds and roots for planting in Barbados, but his real motive was to reinforce the colony. "There I lefte eight men," he writes, "and lefte a Cargezon of trade for that In 1637, when the Zeeland Chamber had just decided not to abandon its post, Groenewegen was leading an expedition against San Thome-a state of affairs which shows that the Courteen's settlement was in a stronger position than the Company's. It is certain that the first fort built on Kykoveral by Groenewegen was not of stone, for in 1627, and again in 1631, van der Goes was promised a fort of brick Failure to fulfil this and other promises caused van der Goes to return home with the whole lot of his colonists in 1632, He was, however, re-engaged, and by 1634 he was back at Kykoveral with two assistants. Significantly, in 1639, he was addressed for the first time as "Commandeur," and one may reasonably presume that this title was given him because of the fact that there were now soldiers under him. A further conclusion that can be drawn is that the promised fort had been completed, and that the soldiers were housed there. It was, as van Berkel described it thirty-one years later, "of quadrangular shape, having below the magazine, and above three apartments in which soldiers are housed, a room for the Commandant and one for the Secretary which at the same time serves to store the cargoes." Meanwhile, the rivalry between the Company and the Courteens for the mastery of Kykoveral was gradually coming to an end. By 1645 the position was so much easier that Groenewegen was made Gov(unor by the West India Company; nevertheless, in the same year the Zeeland Chamber suggested to the Company, that in applying for a renewal of its charter it should stipulate that no private individuals be allowed to trade to Essequebo. This, however. was the last protest, for in 1650 Groenewegen was not only Governor, but also Commandeur of the troops The two colonies finally fused in 1664, for in that year Jan de Moor died and Groenewegen definitely became a Company's servant. Groenewegen died at his post in 1664. He was, as Scott says, "the first man that took a firm footing in Guiana by the good liking of the natives ..... As an associate of Captain Plowell he was responsible for giving substantial assistance to Barbados. A story goes that when it became known in Essequebo that the Indians whom he had sent with Plowell to Barbados were enslaved, he was hard put to show that he was not party to such a diabolical scheme. He solved the situation by marrying an Indian woman by whom he had a son, Amos Groenewegen, who was later post-holder in Demerara (circa 1680--1700), The year after Groenewegen's death Kykoveral saw its first serious action. Commercial rivalry had brought the English and the Dutch into conflict, and in 1665 Major John Scott was sent by Lord Willoughby, then governer of Barbados, to raid Dutch settlements in Guiana. After devastating Pomeroon, 80
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Scott proceeded up the Essequebo and captured Kykove r al leaving there twenty eight men under Captain Keene before returning to BarbaQ.os to boast of his conquest. Scott mentions in his report that he w a s able to secure for his troops 73,788 lbs. of sugar, and this throw s some light on the acti v ities of the settlement. That the Indian trade in anatto was still the chief occupation of the settlers there can be no doubt; but Prince Sugar was already threatening to usurp the throne of King Anatto The British occupation, however was not destined to be long. The first difficulty of the troops was with the Indians, who refused to give them supplies; then the French, w h o were the all ies of the Dutch, came and bombarded the fort; finally, a force under Bergenaar, the Commandeur of Berbice travelling overland by a path that is probably no w part of the Rupununi Cattle Trail, and down the Essequebo, reached Kykoveral and recaptured it. Meanwhile, the States of Zeeland hearing of the fate of their belo v ed Essequebo, had sent Admiral Cryns s en to the r e scue. C ryns sen arrived after Bergenaar had effected its recaptur e but he took the colon y over in the name of the S t ates of Zeeland and instituted one Baerland Commandeur. The Peace of Breda signed in 1667, brought hostilities to a close Pomeroon was now completely de s erted. but Kykoveral was recovering gradually from Scott's blow. There was now some difficulty in finding an owner for the colony but after long and tedious negotiations the Zeeland Chamber of the West India Company took it over once a g ain. Hendrick Rol w as made Commandeur; and though a third Anglo Dutch War was fought in the meantime, Kykoveral was not molested. But this was not to be for len g Louis XIV's ambitions soon precipitated Europe into more wars, and durin g t h e War of the Spanish Succession Kykoveral was attacked (1708). To the lasting sh ame of Commandeur van der H G yden Resen, it must be written that instead of sallying forth to meet the enemy he ignominious l y shut himself up w ith h i s troops in the Fort. Some resistance was given at Plantation Vryheid (Ba r tica) by the owner and his slaves; .ut after two had been killed and a few injured the defenders dispersed. Captain Ferry, the leader of the French exp e dition took his departure on the receipt of a ransom of 50,000 g uilders. paid in slaves meat provisions and pieces of eight But E s sequebo's cup of bitterness was not completely full. Two more French privateers sailed up the river the next year (1709) and com pleted the work of destruction They plundered and burnt to their heart's content. took two hogshead of sugar that were being prepared for export. and left on their departure but two sugar-mills standing. The s e two raids on K y koveral soon woke up the planters to the alarming fact that the Fort could defend neither the colony nor the plantations. A fort, more strongly fortified and more strategically placed, was needed especially 81
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now that the fertile alluvial coastslands were attracting the planters lower and lower down the river. Flag Island (now Fort Island) was decided upon as the best site for the new fort. which was so advanced by 1739 that the seat of govern ment was transferred there In 1744 Fort Zeelandia (as the new fort on Flag Island was was completed. Kykov e ral thereafter was neglected even though it was Gravesande's intention to have it reconditioned that very year. In 1748 it was proposed to raze it, and in 1750 it was reported abandoned. In 1755, however it was again fortified, because of an expected Spanish invasion; but after the scare had passed it was allowed to fall i nto a state of dilapidation again. Kykoveral today is our oldest historica l relic, and it should be visited by all who have pride of country in their hearts. Its name was doubtless an inspira tion. for it "Looked" or "Kyked-over-al" the waters of the Essequebo, Mazaruni and Cuyuni. Provided we have a sufficient leaven of humility in our hearts, we would do ourselves no harm to take as our watch-word-"Kyk-over-al J" 8 2
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WARAMURIE. by CELESTE DOLPHIN Unlike Kwe'banna. a little Amerindian Mission at the top of its fifty steps notched out of a red : brick hill which rises suddenly and almost straight up out of the Wainio one comes very quie tly and gradually upon Waramurie. One crosses the Atlantic from the Pomeroon into the Moruca mouth, and after the first three hundred yards where fal : en trees impede rapid progress. the river makes a series of hairpin turns and twists now to the right. now to the left, so that sometimes after one has trav e lled for an hour in the small mail boat one is almost back or at some point paraNel to where one started. On either side of the river. huge giant trees overhang, casting their re flection into the clear. black water in a quivering cross-stitch pattern. Some times they bend over and clasp hands and shut out the sky. and then for a period they would toss their heads back and so let in the sun. But one usually comes upon Waramurie in the quiet of the afternoon, Waramurie or Warrau worry with its white sand rising gradually from the banks of the river. At the sound of the mail-boat horn dozens of little children can be seen running quickly down the white sandhill to coUect their letters. As they reach the water's edge they leap into thdr corials some just large enough to hold one small brown body. Dipping paddles skilfully into the water they soon surround the mail-boat shouting "Letter for me? Anything for me?" Then one gets a clear idea how very significant these fortnightly mail days are to people in remote areas. It is a lovely sight to see the gleaming brown naked bodies of the small boys as they swim up to the sides of the mail-boat and hold out a wet hand for their mothers' letters. Getting out of the mail-boat with our precious food-box we made our way slowly up to the top of the mission. The ascent though gradual was long and the white sand soft and loose, so every three steps we made we slipped back two. The children foI.lowed us curiously, offering to help with the bagsvisitors are always welcome at Waramurie As we reached the top of the hill, the Catechist met us-he was half Indian, a Cubukru,-and an Indian guide. This Warrau Indian spoke English with exaggerated correctness and precision, but the clipped staccato intonation of his own native Warrau made him very pleasing to hear. As we looked around, over there to the right of the troolie rest house was a large mound almost a hillock crowned with a large cross. The Amerinidan stretched out his right arm pointing to the cross "Waramurie" he said. It seemed a little dramatic then. But the story goes that years and years ago the Caribs and Arawaks were continuously fighting each other on this mission. Periodically the Caribs would come stealthily down through the forest and seek out the Arawak with bow and poisoned arrow, and a bloody battle would
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ensue, after which the victors would bury the bones of the dead on that special spot over which the cross stood. Later the Arawaks who had been able to escape would pay a return call and c ome dow n upon the Carib crying vengeance and they would pile up Carib bones on that very spot This feud between the two tribes lasted for se v eral years until they became extinct in that area, but year s and years of piling bon e s o n b on es had g rown the mound into a hill. Very much later, the Warrau Ind i ans cam e and set tl e d o n t hat s pot. But the legend goes. the spirits of th e d ead pe r iodic ally troubl e d these new sett lers and caused much Warrau worry until 1928 when a cross w as set upon this m o und of bones and a priest blessed th e spot a nd s o forever qu i e te d the evil spirits that troubled Waramurie. It seemed a f an ta s tic s tor y but it is not a mound of sand and is really c omposed of brick s and sh e lls and of bone. When it rains. some of it is broken away and on e can p ick u p bits o f bon e s kull t hat are said to be human. But no one is indi s cre e t e nough to a ttempt to seek thes e bones in the presence of a Warrau, as they beli ev e that would di sturb the sle e pin g s pirits and start Warrau worry all over again. Warrau worry troubled me. It is a beauti ful m i s s ion on a whit e s and y with dense forest behind. There were many houses of the usual type s e en in the interior-four bamboo uprights co v ered with trooHe with two or three family hammocks slung at one end. The famil y hammock wa s an ingenious contraption. Imagine the ordinary hammock but with thre e of fOUf s tor ey s -mother and father would o c cupy the top fla t bo y s in the s ec-o nd and the girls at the bottom. And this is all held together betw een th e s a me two piec es of rope as the usual one. Walking around, the Tndian g uide introdu c ed us to e v eryone and we were shown over the whole mission. We saw a woman making cassava bread circles two feet in diameter that would las t the family a week. One broke off what one needed for one meal and then the rest was hung upon a hook i nside the house until needed again. We met an old man who was e x c ee dingly friendly to us. He walked with the spring of a boy of nineteen and y e t h e had the face of Old Kaie. I couldn't resist asking him hi s a g e. He answered: "It was 1886 I think, when my mother who was wed ded to m y father. ga ve birth to a son, which is 1". We learnt that a man of 40 would g ive his age as anything from seventeen to ninety five He told us how they made Cassirie and how th e y m v d e Paiwarrie, the more intoxicating of the two forest drinks They chewed the su gar cane with certain other herbs and fruit and berries and spat it out in t o a large bin and trampled on it in a c e remonial dance of shuffiing steps for hours on end and then left it to f e rment Aft e r a pe rion r o manv d avs. th e paiwarrie was ready a thick dark liquid ta s tin g like stout. If one partook of this drink at certain periods one w a nt e d to r e mai n q uit e happ il y in the bush forever But more than 84
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that at times of feasting and dancing. in the midst of the Culebra and the Tengereh. as excitement grows and bodies move in frenzied patterns. a too liberal drink of paiwarrie causes feasting to end in fighting and then Waramurie was in danger of Warrau worry. He talked late into the forest night. and it seemed that we had hardly got into our hammocks when the bell ringer came up to our hut calling us to church. The catechist walked over for us and stated that it was necessary to hold services twice weekly as "these people" believed in "iniquity". I wondered what sort of iniquity was peculiar only to Walramurie. He explained the tribal belief in the Piaiman. Whatever happened was because of the good will or bad will of the Piaiman. If the dogs did not scent danger in time to give a warning and a tiger sneaked out of the forest and carried off a child. they swore that the Piaiman was at work Whatever happened-if sickness came-if death came suddenly-if too much rain. if not enough rain it was the Piaiman man. Oh yes. these people believed in iniquity indeed. He didn't intend this to be funny. It was time for the service. the men. women and children trooped in and sat and talked to each other. quite informally. One lady had fixed her hair in four plaits and on each was a different coloured ribbon It was unfortunate that the catechist had some difficulty with his 'r's" and ended all the twelve responses in a loud voice so that everyone was sure to hear "And twust in the Lawd fow he is gwasus". It was a little impossible to be wholly reverent. Immediately after Church followed vigorous games of rounders. leaping and swimming. Then a large meal of fruit. But we had to leave rather hurriedly to catch the tide. Over the height of Waramurie. the breeze comes in from the river. cool and fresh smeLling. and Warrau worry seemed suddenly all blown away as the mail-boat took us back to the mouth of the Moruca. 85
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FENCES UPON THE EARTH by WILSON HARRIS At noon the truck stopped at a huge clearing on the Hinterland Road. Every body climbed out stiffly with a grand feeling of relief. A hill fell away grad ually from the road. and there was a path going down After I had had my sand wiches I set out for a stroll. Soon I had left the where the lorry had stopped Soon the mighty trees closed in over my h e ad; yet not entirely, for many bright sunbeams were clinging like innumerable butterflies to the high branches far up at the tops of the trees. I remember something I had read somewhere a long time ago Something ab<'>l,1t people hearing the trees grow in forests. And I thought that surely I would hear the trees grow in this forest. They were so solid, so timeless. One seemed each moment to hear them quietly settling deeper and deeper; their mighty roots thrusting farther and farther into the an c ient earth. It was an very strange and fantastic and beautiful. Suddenly at a turn in the path I came up on a creek at the foot of the hill. A man was standing by the creek drinking and bathing his hands He had not heard me approach. The s and u n derf oot had muffled my footsteps. My first impulse was to go forward and speak to him. But I was struck by something about him. I felt I would like to stand quietly by and wa' ch him. I felt he had something important to tell me, but not with words. Something important he would tell me simply by his movements, by the lift of his head, by his hands, and by his feet moving upon the ground. I slipped quietly into the bush at the side of the track, and hugged close against the spur of a huge tree. From there I could watch him, without being seen. And now what words may I use to describe the feelings that came upon me at the sight of this man? I felt no shame that I had to stand by, hiding from him like a robber, or a thief in the night This was inevitable. I believed in the rightness of my action. It was the thin g to do, here and now. Drawing room con ventions did not hold at this p'ace or time. Dimensions had altered. Time had altered In their place each mcment unfolded itself slowly and deliber ately, with immense secrecy. with the deep urgency of growth, a part of the pattern of the dynamic earth. It is important that I should say what I felt when I looked at this man standing by the creek. But I may as well tell you here and now that this is im possible. because what I felt was wordless. Many happenings in this world defy art or language, and this was one of those happenings. I knew when I looked at this man that I was very happy watching him. I believe looking at him I knew in tho s e moments the greatest happiness in my life. For the first time that I could remember I looked upon a human being. 86
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standing upon the earth, not fa:.Jsely, by force or subt e rfuge, or bravado or by any sort of empty pretension, but v ery simply, as though to own the earth, were to carry the most natural and easeful burden in the world. I saw that the man was preparing to leave and I felt sorry that he was going He had picked up a few fis hes he had been cleaning, emptied hi s saucepan into the creek ; and wa s stooping finan y for bis axe ; but, at tbat moment a loud shout came from the bend in the patb where I had first seen him. He did not show any surprise but pickin g up his axe turned very slowly as though he were vagu e ly concerned at tbi s intrusion on his solitude. What be saw did not perturb him much, nevertheless a s light frown had gathered be tween his brows. It was John Muir who bad s bouted: a very angry JohrJ. Muir. But I have forgotten you ma y not rememb e r John Muir John Muir is the representa tive of the big mining company from South Africa or Australia or somewbere that has taken huge concessions on this territory t o work gold and diamonds. We had both travelled on the British South American Hinterland Road that morning and when we had s topped for lunch, and I had come on my stroll I had left him busy supervising the unloading of his heavy equipment. He passed qu ite close to me now and I could sense his wrath and bel ligerency. Anger. I tbought, did not suit him He was too corpulent. His face was fat, and his hands were fat. And he s eemed a very alien and ridiculous figure to find in this part of the world. But when I beard what h e was saying I was shocked into urgenc y I knew sudd e nly he was a strong man and a ruthless one despite appearances I knew there was g reat danger in his words that something terrible was liable to happen. He was shoutin g "You bloody fool! What in hell d'ye mean by messing in my creek? D'ye know you're trespassing? Get to hen off this land !" But the man by the creek facing John Muir did not move. I had a splendid view of bim now. His face was very dusky, dusky as the bark of the tree aga i nst wbicb I was standin g His hair was black like coals and crisp on his forehead. It made the duskiness of bis skin seem ligbte r and browner by contrast. He, wore a brief vest, and shorts and was barefooted. He stood very easy and very quiet as a man would who stands by his own hearth, waiting to greet the stran ger who is within his doors. His limbs w ere powerful. They had the perfection of the y oung trees that stand rooted in the forests breathing forth an ageless symmetry in their being. The sbarp bitter words as s ailed him but a s v et he showed no sign of ang er. He bru s b e d them aside in his wordle s s fashion He was fuJ] of patience and dignity He was f ull of magnanimity His lan g uage was the language of poise of gesture He felt that his presence w as enou,!Zh. It would speak for him with finality and precision His attitude implied that it was a bit puzzling, all the 87
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noise and confusion The stranger could not mean. what he was saying. Surely he would explain what it was all about without so much fuss! However it would not do to be hasty. Haste was bad. He would wait, and listen to all the words that were being spoken He himself did not need words. His presence was enough. It was final. I saw that John Muir' s anger had turned into something cold and calcula ting and bitter His strong and ruthless nature could not to lerate this silent dignity. He must shock this man into action He must wring from him words or protests or subservience. He must impress upon him that he was master. He spoke horrible words. Slowly, in answer to his I felt that a tide of fury had begun to rise like a flood of bitter waters. It was a wordless fury, the most terrible fury in the world I could have cursed John Muir for his stupidity, for his lust, for the blindness that lay in the midst of his strength and his ruthless ness. Yet, after reflection I am not sure that he was blind. Maybe he was courting a battle of wills. Maybe he was courting violence. I am not sure. What is there, a man may be sure of, at such moments? And I was not so much concerned about John Muir. It was the man by the creek that held my interest. I was afraid f or him. T ;:tm bafIIed to explain the nature of my fear. But I felt he was in danger. I felt he might lose his mastery over the earth. That ma s terv that had seemed to me so patent and obvious a thing, part of his birthright, the gift of the Unknown God. I felt that he might be swept into madness. I remembered those horrible whirlpools one sees sometimes in dangerous rivers, and I felt he might allow himself to be sucked down by his fury into the bottomless whirlpools of his own nature. When suddenly I saw him lift his hands. I knew it was the end. There was violence in those hands. John Muir would never escape. And then. as if to precipitate the threatening disaster, John Muir spoke words that I felt must surely seal his doom "I shaH drive you off the land. I shall chase you and your people off the land. I shall put up fences. Fences to keep you off, that's what. D'ye hear me? Surely it is plain that only a miracle could have saved John Muir after that! Tel1 me. do you not agree with me? Imagine a man livin g on a spot of land. He has lived there all his lif e He is bound to the land by innumerable ties. His forefathers were there before him. They lived and died on the land. Would you dare to tell that man you would put up fences upon his land? That you would drive him off the land? Only a miracle would save you aft e r that. Only a miracle could save John Muir. The funny thing is. the miracle happened The miracle happened and John Muir was saved. The transition was bafIIing. The transition from fury to calmness. I felt the shock of that transition I saw the effort, the horror of the last few moments 88
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the darkness on the face of the man standing by the creek. I saw his hands filled with a terrible eagerness, grow calm and easy again. It was over in a moment. A moment, as the books say, that was an eternit y I know it is incredible. Few men would b e lieve what I say, that such fury had passed into calmness. But I swear it. It is true. A miracle had happened. For how else can this thing be described, but as a miracle? Suddenly John Muir laughed, a laugh of triumph. He felt he had scored. He felt he had won a battIe of wi!1s, and was now master. I looked at the man by the creek, and I knew better. In a flash I s aw the truth I saw a little of the truth behind the miracle. It is funny how one gets these flashes. Maybe it was some trivial act performed. The man by the creek might have moved his hand on h i s axe in some peculiar fashion; he might have shuffled his feet in a peculiar fashion It might have been the lift of his head I do not know But in a flash he had spoken to me in his wordless language. What he said was this :-Let the stranger build his fences Something divine in me prevents me from killing him. I could kill him easily. I could crush his flabbiness to pulp. But to what end? What is the use of violence? There has been enough violence on the earth. Nothing can be built or preserved by violence. I have no fences to build, I shall trust to my destiny. I shall trust to the forces that brought me on this spot I call my home. I shall trust to the deep things that tie me to the earth to give me my rightful place in the sun. These things shall never fail me. I know I believe. I keep faith with the earth. I trust God. That is enough. There is no other way. I shall be patient. He turned abruptly. He swung his axe across his shoulder. I saw him take a path, known only to himself. along the creek, in the thick forest. The trees clustered protectingly about him. The y and he spoke the same language, the wordless language of being, the language of solidity. When he was gone, John Muir laughed again. But his laugh to me was hollow. A miracle had happened. I believe humbly that J had seen a little of of the truth behind the miracle. But John Muir did not understand. I do not know whether he wiII ever understand Suddenly I heard the impatient honk o f the truck blowing far back on the road: I guessed that my friends were impatient to be on their way again. All around the deep forest seemed alive and whispering. Everything was still the same as before. Even the sun-bri ght butterflie s I bad noticed when I had first entered the forest were still clinging to their precarious percb far up over head on the tops of the mighty trees of the forest. Yes, I know what you will say. The word s I have used are inadequate. Forgive me. I know it was inevitable that it should b e so. The whole thing had been secret and wordless. 89
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THE SPRINGING by ROGER MAIS You could put out your hand and feel the sap rising in the trees, the sun warm lingering, drawing it up to the rich springing where the young leaves were putting out. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled shriIIy. The girl looked out through the window but she drew in again almo s t immediately, and all he heard now was the sound of suppressed giggles He dug his bare toes into the mud of the roadside and felt his bitterness within him like a burning pain. That was all she had for him then. After all that had g one before. She make a mock of him with her cousin, because she was a teacher now. And not even that, really. They called them pupil-teachers at the government school. And he worked in the field. And so there was this great social gulf be tween them. When they had sat next to each other in the fifth form room at the government elementary school it had not b een so It rad been understood that she was his girl. Now there was this division. and only because his choice lay with the land, and hers with a kind of career that led nowhere that was nothing really A pupil teacher in an elementary school. And this girl cousin of hers from Kingston she it was who made Myra see it this way; thinking herself too good for him. He threw the empty sack over his sho ulder and took his machette in his hand He turned and walked stiffly down the road without looking back. When he was round the bend and out of sight he stopped and looked down at his bare feet, at his trousers rolled up to keep the dew off them, at his forearms bare to the elbows with his shirt sleeves rolled up. But he was not ashamed about anything. He was dressed as any working peasant might have been There was nothing to be ashamed of there. Instead he knew resentment against her and all her kind who could see something unworthy in all this. A man's life lay all within the earth he loved. It was all he had. Him self the same and the equal of all those other dark-skinned peasants who owned their land, or rented it. and grew their crops. and reared their livestock, and were free men In their inner understandin g they reco{mised this thin!!. and more, thev resoected it a l ike within themselves, taking their pride of manhood there; and in their fellowmen, holding them in equal esteem Not to about with the lios. but feeling it as something present, and recognisable, and real; that was the bearing of a man. 90
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He walked on feeling the dull edge of his resentment against her like the stones under his feet. He could get himself shoes if he cared to. Shoes to wear out into the field Others had done it. But till this day he had never felt the need of them, in the sense that he lacked anything. And so he came at last to the field that had been his father's and his grandfather s before him The field lay i n a fertile valley and it filled him with pride to stand on the road s ide and look down upon it. The rows of yellow-yam vines climbing up their sticks, and th e s weet p o tato vin e s The rows of bananas. The patch of coffee, dark-green in the shade of their trees that were planted ther e before his grand father s time t o protect them from the SU D. Someon e was down there gath e rin g w ood. Who could i t be? Very well. he would learn who e v e r it w as that h e was not the SOi t of man to tolerate tres passers on his land. He went down the track nimbly as a goat. Down there among the coffee he was, whoever it mi g ht be. H e c r ept clos e r covering the ground silently as an animal stalking his prey He ,topped short suddenl y and d rew him s el f upright with an oath. 'God dam it. I thought it was ... What are you doing there?' Miss Laura's Rhoda who ne v er would s tay in school. They said she was so bad the old woman cou l dn t do an yt hin g with h e r He frowned down at her feelin g that he ought to be angry without quit e knowing why. The girl was as brasb a s they come She just stood there grinning up at him not sayin g a nythin g 'Well what do you want here? 'I came for wood .' Wood ' To make a fire with. 'What e l se w ould y o u be wan t in g i t f o r but t o m a k e a fire with. Don't tr y to be funny' She her s houlders, an d still her g leamin g white teeth s howed splendidly in their settin g of e bony They said she wa s a b a d girl but no one ever ventured to say how bad. or in what way. The ide a just cir culated aro und in an abstract s ort of way The most any body knew was the old wom a n couldn't her. Though why any one should want to man age another he didn't really understand . She had run away from school because the teacher wanted to take th e strap to her. She had bitten hi s hand a l most to the bone. And after that they
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couldn't get ber to go back to school again. She used to sing in the Baptist choir and all, before that. But the school master was a deacon in the church, and on that account she stopped going to church too. Now look here you hav e no business here. You didn't ask me if you could take away any wood from this place Don't you know that's stealing?' For answer she just put her head back and laughed right up at him. It was rich, that laughter. Like the sap flowing up in those trees, answering the pull of the sun. He saw the round curve of her throat whe n her head went back like that as though she was hurling her laughter at him in the meaning of a challenge Not as Myra had laughed, secretly, with that cousin of hers behind the half drawn curtain. Suddenly the anger went out of him, and he knew that he wanted to get a t something in side this girl, to understand her To find ou t for himself what mad e her do the things she did. Why she lau g hed at him when she ou g ht to ha v e been at least contrite or at most an gry. But instead laughed. He felt of a s udde n there was something here that he want ed to find out about for himself He came slowly down the slight incline and stood confronting hen. She watched him with quiet amusemen t, but withall a kind of w a riness He felt it and it made him stop suddenly arrested, with his inten tion as yet unformed within his mind He felt about her as he had felt about the trees this morning, seeing their colourful rich springing where the young leaves w ere putting out. They stood facing each other across the little bundle of firewood that lay at her feet, for the space of a few seconds, in which n eithe r spoke a wor d The whole world became that time as still as their own breathing. And it was as though somethin g passed between them, from eye to eye, from breast to breast; something invisible, but real and with meaning, like the sap flowing in the trees. It was she who bro ke the silence that had fallen upon them like a s pell. 'All right,' s he said, 'it's your wood, you can have it.' And she s tarted to walk away. But he didn't want her to go, now There was this upsurg i ng resol v e with in him to find out about ber, what made her act the way she did. All that. H e wanted to call her to beg her not to go. B nt s omehow the words refused to shap e themselves upon his lips. His throat felt suddenly hot and dry He saw the curve of ber thigh under her short dress as she thr u st against the steepne s s goin!'! up the hill. And the thought of her became fluid and flowed through him like water She turned once and looked steadily at him, saw him standing there gazing after her, with his jaw hanging open. But she d idn't laugh now. And 92
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she wasn't angry with him about the firewood either. She took all these things with the same acceptan ce that she seemed to apply to everything, not asking that they should be different, that people should act other than the way they did; only wary, to be on her guard where she could, to defend herself how and when she could, knowing herself virgin and whole and a little apart from it all. 'So long, then,' she s aid with a gesture of her upJifted hand toward him. And he answered her awkwa r dly raising his hand; 'so long.' He stood watching her until she was gone. He dug hi s toes mto the s oft mud. 'By Christ,' he sai d but without profanity. He would take the wood up to the house after her. She would understand by that he wasn't angry, understanding it as an over ture of friendliness. He would take wood up to the house every day and sit and talk with the old woman, once in a while. But by the time he got to their hou s e on the hill she had gone to the village. The old woman was ail ing. She didn' t co me out and talk with him. He found the axe and c h opped the wood and brought it into the kitchen. Then he wen t s lowly thoughtfully back to his field again. But not to work. He did not work at all that day. He lay by the river and watch e d th e yellow grains of sun in the sand under his fingers. Scooping it up and pouri ng it out with his hand, and throwing handfuls o f i t in t o the air. He olosed his eyes and saw the sap flowin g up inside the trees. He listen ed to the wind liftin g and faIling among the reeds and the sound of it was like the earth itself b rea thing He saw the sunlight leap ing back like fire from the eddies, of the river. curling upward from the concave sides of the water; an d th e g reat boulders squatting on thei r bl ack haunches i n gree n water up to their rumps; the curious way the water circled round t he ir amp'e f orm s lik e fingers caressing. loath to let go of them. That evening, he ret urned late from his field. He was going by M yra's house at the e n d of the vWage wit h the first of the stars. He put two fingers in his mou th and whistled shrilly twice. But now with a bravado that went jeering, taunting through the twilip-bt; harsh again s t the peaceful chirring of the crickets and the meIancholy piping of the whistlin g toads. 93
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THE SYMPHONY OF MAZARUNI by SHEIK M SADEEK In the days of great gold and diamond 'shouts' in the jungles of British Guiana, the only means of travelling to these r emote and then untrodden areas of our vast and wealthy hinterland, was a unique experience For there was no roadway, no air-line and the forest then impressed us as impenetrable. Not quite all of us, I should say; for there were pork-knockers who were nicknamed, because of their heroic deeds undaunted and carefree dispositions; 'Sultan-of-Turkey', 'Tengar', 'Skybar 'Ocean Shark' a n d so on I shaH endeavour to give a vivid descr i ption of my initial journey from Georgetown, the capital of this beautiful country, to Apaiqua, the stop before the terminus Isseneru, hundreds of miles up the wealth y Mazaruni, a tributar y of the giant E s sequibo, the most dangerous of Guiana's waterways. The Stabroek Market's clock showed some minutes after six; when, be yond the boiling wake of water, the City began dwindling. Flanking the steamer on her left until around ten-o clock was the irregular growth of grey-green courida trees, that fringe Guiana's coastlands On her left muddy water lapped, and further and yet further Atlantic miles capped by white crests stretched until they were lost in the misty blue of the horizon I knew not at what time we had started up the River Essequibo Every thing seemed so muddled. But about eleven o'clock, and about an hour a fter we had left Parika stelling I found m y self l o oking at the Island that has a rage in Guiana's colourful history: The historical Fort Island, with the remains of the old Dutch Fort 'Kyk-Over-Al'; a green fringe of wild cocoa tree s in b l oom on which numerous iguanas were basking in tropical sunshine. It was around three when a s hout went with the first sight of the flat. mining town of Bartica lying like a stranded man at the water's edge; at the junction of two g reat rivers; at the foot of a g r e en hill. We did not get passage up the River Mazaruni until the Friday, and dur ing that time we did what little shopping we had to do. lt was far from day-break when we left Bartica. On a dark beach a dim lantern showed me a s eat and carefully I settled myself Then, distinctly a gruff voice shouted: "You heard what the Cap'n says? Cap'n says 'In boat?' And you know who is speaking the Sultan-of-Turkey!" And the motors of that oval-bottom bateau, with its gunwale not more than ei g ht or ten inches from the water, grumbled. And the powerful tumbled leaving a boiling wake of phosphorescence in the darkness as the laden vessel slid against the black ebb that blurred the distant lights of Bartica. 94
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Once more darkness was broken by the shining ball that slowly emerged from beyond the for est boughs. For the very first time I was really breathing the sweet, fresh air of our jungle -a jung l e no less cunning; no less intriguing; no less alluring than Edgar Rice Burroughs' captivating 'Edens of Africa.' Slowly, as though with the sun, the boat began to take on life; until a gaiety so rare, so strangely hilarious, filled the atmosphere. Immediately, while mooring to camp that evening about 5.30 the men like wild monk eys, sprang asho r e with their hammocks in their hands in desper ate efforts to sec ure tie-places. I came out along with the captain and soon found myself lost. The commotion was just too much for me. "Aah! There s a good place." I said to myself, making for the opening where a prospecting knife's blade bit deep into the hard wood. At the same time a partner of mine shouted. "Com-on with the rice Son. The fire wastin'," Quickly, I slung my bam mock then grabbed tbe calabash gOllrd and dasbed for the water to wash the rice When I returned my hammock was on the ground. I looked at the rope, and it was cut, The knife was absent from the wood I turned, and facing me hard was the squatty and compact Sultan. "Is that your hammock?" He growled "Ye-ye-yes, Sir I stammered politely "Oh Me think was any Buxtonian's'" The anger in histone had vanished though his jaws remained firmly set. Later that day, I got to know tbat Sultan was a native of Plaisance, a neighbouring village of Buxton, on the east coast of Demerara. And that pork knockers of these two villages never agreed. They were constantly trying to out wit each other. That was the character I had heard so much about -A cbaracter that was rapidly becoming a legendary figure Until deep into the night the form of that broad-shouldered man, every inch a typical African kept dancing before my eyes. The camp-fire was burning low. Beyond the fire a hammock creaked. Yes, that's Tengar, I mused, jovial Tengar There must be a way to get on with Sultan, Tengar does a murmur escaped my lips as I rolled over for God's good sleep It was a hubbub early tbe following morning to me: The men, scrambling and dashing, each with his own job hustling to be in time. The mist bad not cleared yet; a damp -a depressing silence reigned throughout the whole forest. Only the eternal falling of a fall was heard roaring in tbe distance, wben again that gruff commanding voice repeated tbe captain's order as his broad, tbick palm slapped repeatedly bis tbick chest in stress of utterance: "In boat! Tbe Sultan-ofTurkey speaks." 95
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Tengar took that day: Tall, broad and full-faced Tengar. His intelligent look was not deceiving. He was the strong, country-type, West lndian Negro who entertained us perfect.y throughout our Journey with his numerous bush-yarns about 'Di-Dies huge, ape-like monsters of the treacherous jungles; and 'Masa kurumans legendary demons of the black And at times he would swing to such colourfu l subjects as: Fairies and Rainbows and flowers. Believe me he was a rare type. Pulling paddles and hauling the boat ove r the rapids to the lusty rhythms of deep-throated shanties, one of which ran thus: "Buxton gals ah wash dem bed -; Wash dem beddin's; Only when the rain come down -; The rain come down. Shanty maan!!! Oh, shanty m ...... a ...... a ...... n!!" was real fun. I felt wonderful. Slowly, another day went by. From the men's reactions I knew it was a typical day. But not for me: For never in my young life had I seen such magnifi cence. I watched, with an ever-growing glut for nature, and saw my country break rugged and knew with each turn, each twist. Never had I dreamt of such misty headlines; of those hazy, blue-capped mountains that ranged one beyond the other to the far end of the earth. Gazing around me, while the boat vibrated to the strain of the engine, I saw a forest so green that its colour looked fictitious. Flowers of different hues, even gold, played on the trunks of giant moras, greenhearts and other timber trees; or waved mid-air on vines, or even trailed in the black water where a musty smell mingled with their heavy sweetness. It was yet early when again we camped But we had to, for it was at the foot of Tobouku, the great waterfall before Apaiqua. Another morning From behind the towering, foggy summits the fickle sun peeped mockingly, piercing the dew drops as tho' hate that only enhanced the beauty of this scenic country. Before tropic mist had retreated, those ram starns those vigorous ruffians of the gold and diamond 'diggins' were already stretching their ropey muscles knee-high, waist-high, even chest-high in the roaring waters of the fall on the boat-lines. Their broad flat feet with claw-like toes, panted with death-like grips on the rip-rap of Tobouku's jaws. In that struggle for life someone called aloud in a voice, commanding, yet imploring, as though Venus and Hercules were at war: "Shantie ma ...... a . . . a ...... n!! Shan .. .......... The voice was mumed. A stifled scream foHowed. The man kept rolling over death like a battered buoy pressed against the boiling current; tacked to life by two weakened hands, getting weaker and weaker under its unique ordeal: 96
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"H ..... ee .... ..lp!" The voice was lost as worn fingers refused to grip life, that was a bubble We only glanced at Cuffy. What else could we have done without sharing his fate? He went off like an ant milling in a late stream. We were more than half-way up the f a ll, and it was around nine a.m. "Keep it up, Fred." The captain shouted to the bowman. At that very instant, Fred had eased his padd l e to refresh his hold. In a split-second the boat had swerved broadside, sweeping us. Quickly she flooded, rolled a little, then the underc urr e nt took charge as light cargoes went express. In a matter of seconds everything was reduced to scattered chunks of wreckage; momentarily visible amid the f roth, or rolling upon rocks covered with green, grey or black mosses, pointing jagged ends to the sky; leaving the men, bubbling shouts and screams in the foaming jaws of the master-criminal Tobouku A few seconds afte I had lost footing I found myself dashed on a rock. About ten yards from me, was Sultan on another rock. One after the other the drowning souls pa ssed-passed in thundering foams and churning foams. In hissing crests which the rocks and wind shattered into shimmering, cascading sprays. Then one man came passing very near t o Sultan. Not that I had expected him to stretch his hand to the man, for even a madman wouldn't risk such a thing in Tobouku But I did expect him to be a bit seri ous towards precious life at such a time and place. Imagine hearing these words commg clearly, majes tically above the roar of the thunderous fall. "Passeth thy way Padna, from mortality to eternity; For if the Lord had wanted thee to be saved, he wou l d have provided a rock for thee as he hath pro vided one for me," and slapping his hairy chest in emphasis, concluded "The Sultan-of -Turkey." Surely, the drowning man did not hear a single word of what he said and Sultan did not care either; for he was th a t kind of character was never really serious towards life. He believed in destiny; so everything was fun everything. Under the blistering sun for nearly two hours we remained on the rocks while the angry waters tumbled and splashed around us. It was about one o'clock when the throbbing of an engine was heard as its boat crawled inch after inch up the rocky rapids. Then they flung lines for us, and thus we were rescued. In the boat were seven other survivors of our boat. The rest had suflered the horrible fate in the black waters of Mazaruni. The next day we reached Apaiqua. And the first thing I did was to write home. For I knew news of the washing-away wouldn't take long to reach Bartica. And, as I started to write the letter, as when I started to write this, the faint music of a new-born symphony began -like an autumn leaf it floated down through the still, jungle air to rest on a dormant pool Gradually, the pool 97
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took on life. Gradually, it increaesd, holding Autumn in a whirlpool and I wasn't my own self. Soon unconsciously, I was writing a travelogue -I was reliving the most thrilling, the most eventful chapter of my life. It was a symphony of quaint old Georgetown: The determination of a fearless youth after a fortune of gold or diamonds. It was a page of Guiana's colourful history, and fear on a dark beach. It was the grumbling of motors and the tumbling of propellers. It was the breathing of the sweet, fresh air of a cunning, an intriguing, an alluring jungle. It was the hilarity of a rare gaiety. It was the chattering of monkeys, the creaking of hammocks, the com motion of a mi1lling camp in a bedewed and misty morning. It was the pulling of paddles to the lusty rhythms of deep-throated shanties. It was the many colours the many awe-inspiring things of a tropical jungle. It was the screeching of parakeets and macawS. It was toucans on turo palms and iguanas basking in the sun. It was the struggle for life in the tumbling, the roaring, the falling, the splashing, the the hissing, the black, hostile waters of the water-falls. It was man, with an unmatched, ruthless sense-of-humour It was life resurrected to live in a jungle endowed with the calls, spells and charms needed to hold captive all those who dared enter it 98
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ARTICLES AND REVIEWS FLASH BACK PHILIP PILGRIM'S LEGEND OF KAIETEUR On Wednesday, July 28, 1955, introducing a BBC Programme, Mr. E. R. Edmett, the Producer, said: "Ten years ago in Georgetown, British Quiana, there was given the first performance of a choral work (originally intended for chorus and orchestra and then recast for three pianos in place of the orchestra), the music for which was written by one Guianese, Philip Pitgi'im, to verse and to a theme created by another, A. J. Seymour. In Britain now are several of the people who either helped"1nthe organi sation or took part as performers or were members of the audience which wit nessed the birth of a production which could truly be described as a native work both in conception and performance. The programme re l ates the experiences and the reminiscences of these people told in their own words and recorded for the annive r sary of the event." Mrs. Joy Allsopp took part in that Progu-amme and she wri tes :-Away from British Guiana, everything that had anything to do with home became nostalgic, particularly a memory already charged with so much feeling The Kaieteur Legend Even th e n ten years after the first performance in Georgetown, everyone of us in the small group of people gathered in aBBe studio in London, was just a little emot i o n al. We had recorded Glur small parts in this tenth anniversary programme separately, over a peri o d of a month or two, and now we had come together to listen to the finished recording. The programme was a collection of memories and impressions, not only of the Legend but of Phfip Pilgrim himself and our thoughts were principally with Philip and with his family as we heard v arious people give their impressions of bim his tutor say how gifted a musician he was. As we sat there listening to the programme, I am sure we saw and heard not only what was going on then, but felt again the atmosphere at tbe Assembly Rooms in 1944, the air of excitement the pride of achievement felt by everyone, even those who had nothing at all to do with the production, who only belonged to the Legend because the Legend belongs to Guiana. We also saw again the choir file on to the stage, the soloists George Harding and Ismay Callend ar, the pia n ists Colin Franker, Reggie McDavid and then Philip himself, tbe conductor John Heuv e l and the performance began. It had come upon us suddenly, this music, and we were unprepared for the splendour of it His inspiration came out of the unknown and untouched forest, Philip was very anxious to collect and preserve the true folk music of Guiana. things 99
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like the now familiar "Hanimi" which h e arranged for choral singing -and the music of the Amerindians. The main theme of the Legend came from this folk music, and that is the theme which most people remember, which comes right at the beginning with the words Now Makonaima the Great Spirit dwelt ... and which recurs again and again. The structure which first inspired this outpouring of music was written four years before, and was essentiaNy an old Amerindian folk tale of Old Man who was sent over the Fall in a wood skin by his resentful daughters." This, put into rhymed verse, and eiliriched with all the magic of the atmosphere of the Fal ls, expressed in poetry, became the Legend as we know it, and Kaie, the old man, emerged as the central figure who had by an act of will to become a sacrifice for his people. There bad not been, in the British West Indies, in 1944, much musical composition of any sort. Even the calypso had not won the respect and popu larity it has today. And so as people filed into the Assembly Rooms for this premiere, they had for the first time th e real thrill of a first night. It was not, as always before -'For the first time in British Guiana', but simply 'For the first time' And so the conversation IDling out those elastic few minutes before the performance began was not, 'Did you read about the capacity houses in Trinidad' or the review in some magazine but 'How wonde ; ful it will be when people in other countries have an opportunity to hear this -our Legend.' And there, in that word was the pride -'our' Legend inspired by our Kaieteur Falls, written by our Arthur Seymour, set to music by our Philip Pilgrim and performed by our friend s and families. There will be many other such nights in Georgetown, perhaps on the same site .though not in the same building We and our sons and daughters, shall taste again the peculiar joy in being present at the unveiling of many a masterpiece of art which is of us and so satisfies us more than anything we have heard or seen before. But there cannot be another first born -that was the Legend of Kaieteur There was at that time in 1944 w 1 riting of various kinds which belonged to British Guiana, but music reaches out in a way that words never can, and draws people together until they realise that they all feel the same way And in that BBe studio, that afternoon in Augu s t 1954, we all felt that in the programme the words expressen just about as much as they could, but now we wanted the music. There had been just a te a sing extract from one of the solo parts but lovely as it was it only reminded us of Keats' 'Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard ( Are sweeter .... And all the way home odd phrases of melody vibrated after ten years sleep, in the memory 100
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OLD WINE IN NEW WINESKINS. by E. R. BURROWES John Apie, a nineteenth centurry painter, has said that "Art is more god like than science. Science discovers; a r t creates". It is reasonable to subscribe to this statement, because the primary aim of art is to select forms and colours according to the artist's aesthetic taste and the artist expresses himself in such a way as either to awaken pleasing and empathetic emotions or to shock the mind into awareness and indignation. There are numerous forms of interpretation in Modem Art: Pablo Picasso's Cubism Dali's Surrealism, Jankel Adler's Dissectinism, Ben Nichol. son's Abstractionism, Henry Moore's Monumentalism, Georges Dis tortionism, and a myriad of other "isms" that have shocked their way into twentieth century art. These new subjective statements are not to be dismissed. as they often are, as mere whimsicalities and conceits born of unbalanced minds, or the warped and obscene visions oozing up from the abysmal depths of schizophrenia. The forms of modern art as exemplified in the paintings of Picasso and his contemporar ies, in the music of Stravinsky and Dizzy Oilespie, in the prose of James Joyce and AJdous Huxley and in the poetry of G. M Hopkins and T. S. Eliot are vivid reflections of the century in which we are living and are not only intensely human documents but al s o intellectual monu ments equal to if not s urpas s ing many c r e ated in the past. All modem art forms are the result of one great impulse, to which we give the comprehensive title, Expressionism. This i mpulse is a result of and is chiefly discernible in times of great spiritual tension and it has been recurrent from the Renaissance to the present day. For example, Giotto who is classified as the father of Modem Art found his inspiration in the life and teaching of "Christ's Poor Man", St. Francis of Ass isi. St. Francis taught that God is love and ever present in the manifestations of nature; Giotto expressed this teaching in his work and was therefore the forerunner of natu ralism and the high prieSt of humanism in art. We often state the fact that we are living in the age of the machine and the atom, but few of us pause to think of the implications involved and fewer try to analyse our emotional reactions to it. The experience of many generations hath shown that the spiritual and the temporal are intimate in correspondence and are linked by esoteric forces which few if any of us fully understand. When the world moved with the stately dignity of the 17th and 18th centuries, people delighted in the madrigal and the soothing delicacy of the harpsichord. They moved with the languorous grace required by the courtly minuet and the pavane, or with the lightsome abandon of the contre danse. Hogarth painted such biting satires as "The Rake's Progress". "The Marriage a la Mode", Rowlandson took a leaf from the pages of Swift and caricatured the people of his time as he saw them. a generation of Little Clowns and YahoOs 101
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with small-swords sticking aLIt behind like stiff tails from their wide skirted coats. Francis Boucher and Fragonard delighted the debauched French nobility with the opulent forms of nude courtesans masquerading as Graces and God desses. It took three revolutio n s two and one industrial, to purge the world of the h o ney-sweet poison induced by this Circean draught. But befo r e the convalescence of th e wo rld had been safely passed through, the 19th century came with i ts smug inanities, and beh i nd a curtain of short sighted complacency the stage was set for the enactment of the tragedy of the 20th century With the clo sing of the first act in 1918. people went wildly in search of an interlude light enough to the tension of a world but recently at war. They gave in Jazz and s w ing a musical if noisy sigh of relief. But creators like Picasso Matisse, Roualt and Paul Klee in pain t ing, like Sibelius. Stravinsky and Ravel in music and like Joyce, Huxley and Eliot in writing. expressed their indignation by introducin g apparently new art forms which reality are not nearly so new a s most peop le believe. It is however the t rut h to say th a t the intellectual blade sharpened on the whetstone of human suffering is cutting deeply into the sp i ritual excrescences in an endeavour to expose the t ende r truths truths that will show the silver cord in music which stretc hes from B eethoven' s symphonies to Stravinsky's music for the Ballet and on to the f renz:e d s pasm s of D : zz:e Gilespie's Be-Bop; and in paintin g passing from Rembrandt's god-like use of light and shade to Gauguin's primitivism on to Graham S uth erland and Jankel Adler. These are just a few of the man y turning points in the intellectual pr ogress of Art. Turning points, but not inno va tion s The o rigin of Picasso's Cubism is found in the art of ancient Egypt in the mosaic patterns of the early Arabian and Moorish Moslems and in tre stiff o f B yza ntine a rt. And Signorelli, Paolo Ucello, Memline Peter Breughel EI Greco. Velasquez. Goya are all brewers of the various vintages of art which we now designate as Modern. So modem art can be referred to as "Old Wine in New Wineskins". What is the connection between all this a n d a rt in British Guiana? I should like to preface my answer b y referrin g to a quotation from a broadcast of mine when I said that "The art of B r itish Guiana i s the art of the Caribs whose carven symbols in situ on basalt known as Timehri. truly represent the primitive source without which no country can claim an art of its own". Apart from these, we who practise art. being merely the offs pring of aliens from other parts of the earth, have "gone awhoring after the stran g e gods" of the three European countries that have in turn guided the destinies of this colony. The result of our efforts has been the giving birth to an hybrid which has neither the virility nar the aesthetic wrtue of its mixed parentage. A gloomy picture, but not altogether without hope. There is an important factor which must be considered and which could assist in keeping modern art alive in British Guiana; the people who visit Exhibitions and who purchase the works of art on show These people are to a great extent responsible for the type of art w o rk produced. 102
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Most of these patrons who claim to be art l overs are merely sentimentalists at large, who are concerned only with bei n g abl e to recognise a landscape because of its topographical exactitude, or a port r ait because of its recognisable features. This is a devotion n o t to ar t but artifice, not to interpretation but imitation. They would be satisfied to see year after somnolent year the same inane essays in p aint; nice little red-ro o f ed o r t r o o l ie-tl:atched country cottages with orderly companies of coconut trees stand i ng at attention on their best Sunday school behaviour. There have been some attempts m a de In the past by Guianese artists, to identify their work with modern trends preval e nt in Europe. This writer remem bers R. G. Sharples' illustration of a stanza from the Rubaiyat", "Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough . ." Wilson Minshal's "A man and a dog watch ing a tree grow". the writer's "Rocking in rhythm". "Diggo Do" and "Jetsam", Reggie Phang's "Unmarried Mother" and Basil Hinds' "Jive" But the Working People s Art Class first exhib i tion in April of this year was an outstanding example of the aesthetic progress being made in British Guiana. The work at that April exhibition wa s of an unspoiled freshness. in which modem primitivism and even intellectual abstraction were pleasingly demon strated. and therein lies the hope of a future development of a typically Guianese art. I believe men like Wharton, Waddy. Bowman. Webb Craig and Samuels, all members of the Working People s Art Class will be remembered as those who g-reatly assisted in laying the foundation of a true Guianese Art our own wineskin 1 0 3
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SIMEY ON EDUCATION by LILIAN DEWAR I must remind those of u s who are not teachers and who generally think of education as the business of the Education Department Schools and teachers, that "education is a function of the society it s er ves, unavoidably concerned with the environment in which young people grow up, that the community and its traditions (i.e. we as human beings) are stron ger in their i nfluence on personality than formal education". Therefore Simey s most basic pronouncements for education are perhaps these: "In order to make their way upwards in the social scale, the middle classes have to adopt patterns of behaviour funda mentally different from those of the mass e s They are dri v en to demonstrate their relative superiority by cutting themsel v es adrift from their own people, and identifying themselves with the white middle classes as far as possible. Middle class culture tends to be white culture The use of the local dialects is frowned on; remarkable instances of the rejection of the local surroundings can be seen in the art classes in schools, where it is more usual to find paintings of European flowers than of the West Indian countryside. All that is beautiful and attractive in West Indian life, social and other is rejected in favour of a stilted imitation of a foreign way o f life". And a g a i n: "the most pressing task of the immediate future is to assist West Indian communities to build for themselves a culture in which they can rest and of which they can be justi fiably proud. The chief barrier to stability in the social structu r e has come from the imposing of standards from the outside world, which are a crushing burden for West Indian peoples to bea r". Now, however much we may quibble none of us who participate in that supreme rejection of ourselves by ourselves the bringing of ethical values to bear on hair formation: good hair, bad ha ir, etc., can deny the fundamental truth of Simey's diagnosis and movements back to Africa and India are not yet of mere historical interest. But once we admit this rejection of our environ ment, once we admit that it i s complicated by racial issues it is healthy to realise that the West Indies are not peculiar in thi s respect, to realise that all colonisation may be s tudied as a pro bl e m in adjustment to a new envi!fonment to realise that Australia New Zealand South Africa o n one side Canada the U.S.A. and Latin-America on the other, have gone through and to some extent are still going through thi s phase of r e jection of local surroundings, of looking to West European civilisa t ion for standards. As R. Frost puts it : "the land was ours before we were the land's." And cultural dependence is to a high degree related to economic depen dence. As long as a colonial territory exports only raw material and imports all its manufactured goods standards and ideas tend to be impo r ted too. That is because for the export of raw material the r e i s needed only a large unskilled labour force; and becau s e a single crop eco n om y d oes not provide a wide enou g h range of activities for intelIectual life, which must therefore seek its stimulus from without. A single crop means a res t ricted mental horizon To 101
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quote : "we must be clear that thought is not an independent self-contained and abstractedly intelligible fact but is intimately bound up with action In actual fact the existing body of idea s (and the same applies to vocabulary) never exceeds the horizon and' the radius of acti v ity of the society in question." Wha t is more, until t here is d i versifica t ion of economic ac t ivity until there is a suitable fram e work provided in which it can operate, there can be no worth while reorganisation of the education s y stem, e .g, untIl we commit ourselves to peasant farming the Agricultural Bias Scheme i s a mere tinkering with the problem. What the educational system needs most of all is a sense of direction. Education can only be understood when we know for what society and for what social position the pupils are bein g educated. It is beOOJUse we lack thie sense of d i rection, as much as becau s e of our predilection for Eng]Jsh standards, that education has been out of touch with environment throughout the West Indies. Education, the content of which is so entirely divorced from life as we Jive it, educati o n which takes nothing from the Wes t Indian environment can hardly be expected to give anythin g back to that environment and it doesn't. It does not become part of a man's personality it has no influence on his actions, it leaves him at the mercy of his emotions, which are not all engaged in the educational process, when he should think. That is at least a contributory factor to our emotional instability. It is all the more disturbing, therefore, that a University College should have be e n set UJ) which shows every sign of perpetuating the existing system of secondary education and this before any social or economic policy has been mapped out. The la c k of policy Simey makes abundantly clear : "It is ob viously desirable that the responsibility for producing a general plan for the social, political and economic development of the West Indies should be placed on the shoulder s of a single officer or agency of government, for it has become so diffused that the task o f planning may be said to have gone by default". f do not forget that Dr. Taylor promised us an intelligence trained in basic courses that is expected, I suppose to adapt itself to any situation: but to this we may apply America's educational touchstone often irritating, always provoc a tive : trained f o r what? The great drawback about basic courses is that they are everywhere applicable : they constitute a bod y of learning which is not modified by the environment in which they are being taught: they offer ready made problems with ready-made solutions: they do not offer problematical situations: they therefore do not demand the use of the intelligence if we accept Dewey's definition of intelligence as "operations actually performed in the modification of conditions." And yet what we need most in the West Indies is the technical skill to modify our conditions I do not forget either that the Commission on Hi g her Education shook a warning finge'l' at those who thought that all other stages of education should be perfected before the University is added a s a co p ing stone "Had this course been followed in the older countries, they said, their educational development 105
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would have been very different aFld ve ry muc h slower. I on l y wonder that the Commission sQ.ould have looked to Mediae v al Europe with its strong social cobesion for a precedent for what should be done in modem times in colonial territoTies that have to build up a community life from scratch. Why don't we rather look to development in tbe new countries, to the States and Canada, where I think we should find that the st a ndards o f academic education are not as high as tho s e in the older countries, but where the communities have taken root because the y have u s ed technical skill in modifying their environment. We must take root, we must make a n act of possession of the West Indian environ ment before we can talk of West Indian culture. When I speak of technical skills and the modification of environment, I have no grandiose plan s in mind for a vast development of our resources, be cause it is natural to me to agree with Simey s glo o my pronouncement that the West Indies have no reSOurces to deve'op. But I agree with him also that what ever we do "the work must begin with the masses which lag so far behind". I believe "that the people are the most important fact in resource development. Not only is the welfare and happiness of individuals its true purpose, but they are the means by which that development is accomplished; their energies and spirit are the instruments; it is not only for th e people but by the people." And yet we largely ignore t h e p e ople We k n ow t tat w orhrs o n the job are most open to educational influences yet there is n o sin g le agency (except perhaps tbe Agricultural Instru c tor) t hat t'ries to re a ch tbe worker on the job. We do not realise that education is f ssent'ally a n in s trum ent for trans f ormi n g so ciety; that is, a programme of educa t ion is ne cessa:ry before every undertaking whether the undertaking be adult suffrage. a land settlement scbeme. or co-operatives We neglect even those opport u nities that lie nearest to band e.g. we prefer to use our staff of school inspectors as apostles of an administrative code rather than as an extension of the Training Col'ege for the trainingof teachers in service; in much the same way we use our police force to enforce traffic regulations rather than to direct traffic. Sime y 's tones are least mournful when he is discussing the possibilities of integrating the educational and al;!ricultural systems: "Good farming is the key to the economic and social problems o f tbe West Indies. The development of family life a g ain bas l)een recogni s ed as the crux of peasant farming, and peasant farming, in turn. is se e n as a means of establishing a secure economic status for the family" But the measures he approves of seem to me half-hearted if we really want to settle people on the land people who have had no real tradition of farming. and whose education. if any. has left them functionally illiterate. Thes e measures. the teachin g of chil d care and a n Agricultural Bias in Senior Schools and Young Farmers' Clubs. are largely those in use in the stable rural communities of Eng land. But I repeat we have to build up our communities from scratch and again the experience of the new countries, not ablv the experience of the Agricultural Exten s ion Service of the TV. A. in the States ho1cis out most hODe for us in our attempt to establish a sound rural economv. The wo rk there is based on the demonstration of a better wav of life and the demonstrations are carried out to the men and women of the com106
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munity on a farmer's land and in his kitchen by 2 agents of the service, a Farm Demonstration and a Home Demonstration agent. The farmers learn terracing and other soil conservation practices, while their wives provide their lunch and at the same time learn how to prepare and serve a well-balanced meal. The District Nu rse sometimes joins them explaining how diseases are spread, in sisting on cleanliness, giving advice on child care. Here is a method of attack against that a pathy with which, says Simey, the average villager in the West I nclies regards matters o f hygiene and sanitation. The Agricultural Instructor, the Social Welfare worker, and the District nur se can form a similar team here, taking education into peop l e's hOlmes. For it is necessary to realise the creative significance of action: "Only a new type of action can give birth to a new type of thought". Simey says "the administrative problem has in fact resolved itself into one of generating a spiritual dynamic withill the people, translating it into action and so guiding this action that, when mistakes occur, they may n o t be so serious as to des t roy the work a s a wbole rather tban a part of it". Above all we need a purpose, a comm o n obje ctive towards which to work. Simey tells us little a bout except that there is none, but be does provide us with working hypotb eses. 107
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A region begins to think ART IN THE WEST INDIES by EDNA MANLEY I want to. tell you abDut our struggles in the last twenty years here in Jamaica Here in the simplest and briefest terms is an attempt to. give you a picture Df all the wa r ring and confusing elements, histDriC and social that we artists are struggling to find Dur way through and here also. is an attempt to ShDW you some Df the mistakes we are trying to. avoid making. Years ago. I rememb e r judging a large collection Df drawings and paint ings not one single work had portray e d the features Dr the characteristics of a Jamaican face Even worse, there was one little study or sketch Df a ma!l"ket scene and belie v e it or not, the market women under their scarlet bandanas had yellDw hair, pink faces and even blue eyes! And don't fDrget those were elementary school children. I couldn t help being shattered as I think any sober thinking perSDn must have been. Do. you realise that those children from peasant homes, seeing almost nothing but people Df their own race, their own colour, were actually painting the casual and stra y white person who. pa s sed on their horizon and what is more, clDthing them in the familiar peasant clothes and setting them in the familiar framework of their Dwn peasant lives. It does e x plain part of our probl e m a prob l em that is linked with the colonial rule in all coloured countri es, a problem that is part of the dominatiDn of a fDreign pDwer. But I do admit t hat is only part of the prDblem. A little later I began to ta k e an interest in our poetry and short stories and there I met the s ame astDunding ph e nomenon Poems abDut daffodils and snDW at Xmas. PDems w here e v ery metaphor every image and symbol was inspired by a northern climate and a northern geography PeDple who have never left Jamaica describe the beauties of English village life and one image stands Dut particularly vividly, in a poem by a young lad who. had never left the heat of the St. Andrew plains-and yet he wrote "the icy winds that pierced my soul" Our job then was to. peel Dff layers and layers Df artificial insincere, unthinking expressiDns that had no. more genuineness Df feeling than a parr D t 108
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that has learnt a set of phrases which it repeats whenever its memory is evoked by a set of circumstances. We had to start by trying to open our eyes and our ears and our hearts to our world around us, as we saw it. We had to think back over our history and discover why we had become deaf and blind to the land and the people that were Jamaica We had to remember that we had become detached from the cultural realities of our En g lish an c estors and that th e arts of the Negroes who had come as slaves had been ruthlessly wiped out. The art of these two peoples who in Jamaica, at any rate are our two strongest main root s must be understood if w e a:re to be in a position to under stand ourselves. And it is also necessary to keep forever in mind the fact that art is not a thing that a man does with his hands only. The art of a race or a period-is the result of the e motional and t h e mental processes o f that race o r o f that period. On e so o ft en h e ars a man of one race comparin g his art with the art of another race and speaking with amused contempt of the differences as if they were the result of inferior techni cal ability. Nothing cou d be more evidence of a misunderstanding of what art really is. Art differs-not because of the presence or the lack of proficiency-art differs becau s e of a difference in aim. Art differs in the way that religions differ, and social structures differ because they are all the expression of somethi n g that i s carving out a particular channel for itse lf. Art is the expression of the destiny of a people and as such, it is authentic a s it stands. And this thing goe s tremendousl y deep-you may crush a peopl e 's sel f expre s sion but you cannot al t er certain fund a m e nt a l thin g s that make them what they are. I have seen it here in Jamaica with my own eyes. You may falsif y and distort his ex pr e s s i on o f him s elf. but the day you set him truly free to be him self-that da y y o u will s e e the hand of the pa s t touching with life and authenticity tho s e things that are born in the freedom he has found. And so a thousand years of English heritage and even more of African confront us in the ever freein g circles of our art world in Jamaica to-day. And as I say we must try to understand the art of these two peoples if w e a:re to be in a position to understand ours e lves. 109
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I will take first the Negro who is numericaily the stronger. For a thousand years and more the Negro lias carved the symbols of his gods, the expr e ssion o f his deeply intens e sp iri:!ual conciou;mess, carved with as passionate a s incer ity as t h e West erners carved the i r crucifixes and madonnas. Naturally no slave o wner would permit him to preserve his spiritual life in this way, to be a source of fortitude and resistance to the violence that was being imposed on him. No, there were to be no gods and no Traditions and no memories of the past, ancient and powerful as it was. So the Anci(wt Negro tradition was crushed and those of you who know the value placed on NeP.'ro Art by the highest critics of Europe will know that it was an intense and vitally spiritual that we lost. So the Negro tradition was wiped out and the European traditi o n held on and was spread from the minds of teachers missionaries and settlers who with a nostalgic vividness born of homesickness passed it on in school, chu rch. home. Hence the young person wishing to express himself was hedged in by double wall of unreality-on the one hand blinded by the flaws and weaknesses of colonial rule, which consciously or unconsciously made him feel himself unworthy and inferior, and-on the other side caught by the power of Enropean culture, while the circumstances left him impotent to do other than weakly emulate something that completely detached him from his To him the world of Wordsworth was as vivid as the lonely and home sick school teacher couM make it-the daffodils danced on the hill for himwhilst unheeded the great sun-I!od travened across his sky as his land lav blaz ing in drought and his people like the ancients prayed for rain. Our problem twenty years ago was that we did not understand the beauty of our own J arnaican people and if you will forgive me I wiII state that I was never guilty of this crime. What I mean is that the pure Negro and the coloured person were blind to their own beauty-so they had nothing to p r aise and nothing to glorify and so inevitably there could be no painting and no sculpture. I do not know about the other islands, I only know that here in Jamaica we were dominated by the European and hence the Greek traditional concept of beauty and absolutely blind to all others-unaware that the Egyptian beauty is older and a s eternal as the Greek, the Chinese, the Indian and the Negro too. I am no psychologist, but it seems to me-to put it on its lowest plane that even the simplest person must realise that there is something most fatally and terribly wrong with a people who do not ever describe what they see but always describe what someone else has seen. 110
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To have an art we must be given a chance to develep the urge to express directly our own emotions born of the realities of our own land and our own people. This then is our heritage and to it is added some Indian and Chinese in fluence. So now the problem of the art teacher in Jamaica and not only the teacher, but anyone interested in and desirous of supportmg our artists, is one of underst.'.l:lding tbis baCKground or ours and learning to know what to encour age and what sort of help is needed. In any country in t he world and in this one particularly, an approach to the arts must call for a grea t flexibility of mind and even more important a recep tive approach rather than a domineering or interfering one. The job is to help the artist to find himself, and to give him confidence. not to impose on him anyone else's theories or doctrines. To try to do so will only tend to make the young artist insincere or con fused, his art must be his self-expression and only when he has found that self. can his art achieve sureness and maturity. No amount of prating about what other countries or other individuals produce can help him at all. at alL Help him to find and be sure of himself by giving him a dynamic and a real society to live in and one that he can feel himself an essential part of. U you have the training or natural mental equipment-help him to find the sort of technical ability that can put that self on to canvas or paper. The process of his development cannot be super-imposed from outside and in very truth it cannot be rushed-all the money in the world spent on first class art schools will only confuse him, if he is not first being given a chance to find himself as part of a nation that has faith in itself and part of a group that needs his services. This last is particularly your job-if he is not needed, he can never have a sense of true purpose, and such cultural development as comes into being wil1 lack practical application; both artist and pUblic will stay just where they are -out of touch. out of sympathy. This is really important. If you let him drift away from you, your country will be like a man who has deliberately allowed his eyes or his ears to be destroyed. He must be part of you, if you are to be complete. and you must be part of him if he is to find reality. There is no such thing as a nation without an art, but a nation who loves and takes pride in its artists is a nation capable of the full realities of civilisation and culture. 111
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So let us take a look at the two artistic traditions from which, in a some what battered way we are now being born. I am going to limit myself strictly to the fine arts-on which ground J feel surer of myself. In comparing English art and Negro art, I think one can be justified in saying that English art with one or two exceptions is mainly objective and Negro art is mainly sUbjeotive. Just suppose that you go to bed one night and have a bad nightmare and you wake in a bath of perspiration and actually as one often does, shaking with fear. Suppose you are a painter, and next morning you are so interested in your dream and you are so impressed by the fact that you remember it so clearly and see all the details with such clarity that you decide to paint a picture of it. Now imagine another kind of person who has had a similar dream and when he gets awake next morning ,the thing that interests him about fiisCfream is not the clarity of it, nor his own remarkable memory of its details but the extraordinary state of emotional excitement and distress that it was able to in duce. And being also a painter he decides to make a picture giving as vividly as possible an impression of the state exaggerated fear that has been ex perienced. Not unnaturally the objective artist will accuse the subjective artist of over-distortion and over-emphasis, the subjective artist will always feel that he is incapable of possessing the skill to give sufficient emphasis to re create his experience. The first painter will give you a picture of the scene that created the fear, the second painter will be striving with every power of hand and mind to re-create the fear in your mind that he experienced. I personally think it is idle to attempt to evaluate the approach. The truth is that most great artists have an element of both qualities in them. but with one or the other predominating, in a marked degree In English art, Gainsborough is at one end of the scale and Blake is at the other. Negro art is nameless and unsigned but i t too, contains both factors. English art, being objective on the whole adds to one's gifts of observa tion, and appreciation of life and nature as it is. Negro art gives a picture of the emotional and spiritual struggle towards self-realisation; fear and fertility are two important facts in all life 112
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The negro carves his symbol of fertility by disto r ting the human body and so gives his conception an added symbolic significance. Some one of another race seeing his carving might interpret the lack of proportion as ignorance and lack of skill. Fear to him is the evidence of some divine presence when he carves his deity, he distorts in order that his image will induce in you the fear that he feels and that he wishes you to feel-in order that you shall recognise the presence of divinity or as a European would describe it of some supernatural force The European paints as it were, the face of God, in his love of nature and the dignity of the hlu!man face. The Negro uses the human face and body to create for you the experiences which his contact with God arouse in him. You see one is objective and one is subjective. And in my own personal experience of Jamaican art I feel these two methods of self-expression struggling side by side. As a result of our European education, we tend to fall into the mistake of recognizing the objective and dismissing the subjective. But I venture to say that to social workers like yourselves the SUbjective artist with his unsophisticated and unreflecting responses are infinitely more likely to give you the key to your own problems. And understand me, I do not use unsophisticated or unreflecting as terms of belittlement. Art is bound to come to a dead end if it departs to too great a distance from these things. European art did and it took a Van Gogh and a Russian to bring in a new life again. But for your uses Surely that revealing vis ion of themselves that these people will give you can be the key for your own understanding if you have the freedom and breadth of mind to accept it. I put in a special plea for the people who put emotion before observation and experience before accuracy not because I think they are more serious more sincere or more real, but because they are the people who can do so much to help us to understand ourselves. They are the people who help us to free ourselves of our repressions, or our shallowness, of all those reactions which are not genuine and spontaneous. I find in my art class, fo, r example that the few bold souls who trust their emotions are an endless inspiration to th e more timid and help them to step out and trust themselves 113
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Nowadays of course, the influence comi ng from the advanced teacher and students abroad is all in this direction. European art years ago rebelled, away from the over-intellectualised channel that its objective course had led it into, and went in search of a new and vital emotional stimulus and in this search it found Negro art. Because we are so shut away here, this new direction of thought took a long time to come here but. we are just be g inning to feel a new freedom from its influence. So may I beg of you if any of you are in places where the spirit of artistic freedom is still only struggling to be born, to realise the full significance of it not only artistically but socially and to try to understand and to help. It is going to take patience and understanding and oh, so much love and faith! H you only knew the loneliness, the hyper-sensitiveness of the oldest and the toughest artist! His is the endless attempt to find order in chaos, to find truth where there are so many lies, to find faith where there is no proof and can never be. To be his only judge of the false and the meretricious. None can help him in the final decision and only a few can understand. I wonder if you know the passion and the pain it takes to make a picture? And here I could come to one last point. So very often the artist is not a good citizen and this I think we have to face as inevitaable. The sensitive imaginative round peg in a square hole, if he is brave and strong enough becomes an artist and through his maladjustment with Society he creates the harmony in artistic form that he is unable to find in life. Sometimes it is just that he could easily have been a burglar-or even a murderer-an Ishmael with his hand against all men But sometimes it is that because of his ruthless mental honesty and his sensitiveness to all tbat is false, he sees through the standard concepts of morality to the humbug that lies underneath and he rebels against a form that has no inner validity for him. Sometimes too, the things that the average citizen thinks important are not important to tbe artist at a11 and he sweeps them aside. Things like social and economic security which can so surely enslave a man, he fears, and will have none of-and the politeness that is but a mask for boredom and irritation -he will have none of that either. I always remember Harold Stannard of the British Council saying to me some ago, when I was distressed at the lawlessness of a certain young artist :-114
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"My dear Madam-it is a tough enough job trying to help to build an art-but if you want your artists to De conventional moralists as well-you are doomed to disappointment." Perhaps in his very failure to adjust and understand our present society he wiIl be forced to find peace b y creating a vision of a world as it ought to be. And don't worry, he will pay as everyone pays, in pain and despair. H faith and patience are of any avail we here in Jamaica will make our contribution and it will be an art born of the sunshine and the torrents of rain Born of the land and of the sea Born of the joy and the pain of our people We in Jamaica wilJ never look back now. But what we want to know of and to s ee and to understand are the con tributions that the best of you are making-that it may give us strength and courage to go on. This article represents the rough notes of a Jectu i e given some years ago to a Social Welfare g:-oup u::dergoin g training in Jamaica under Professor Simey. 115
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LITERARY CRITICISM AND THE CREATIVE WRITER by EDGAR MITfELHOLZER This-I have good reason to believe-will be mainly about literary criiticism and its benefit or lack of benefit, to the creative writer. It will pro bably be a bit garrulous and rambling for that h appens to be my mood of the moment. I like indulging my moods. By way of illustr a tion, it will be necessary for me to refer to one or two of m y own lit e ra ry experiences, though it is a necessity I abhor for I ha v e always p referred and still prefer the detached, impersonal treatment. I am of the s trict belief however that it is chiefly through one's own experiences that th e soundest judgments a r e arri v ed at. I might even go so far as to sa y that I c onsider it a good thing to be self opinionated to be more influenced by one s own individual s ummings-up on people and things than by the findings of others. I recall-not malicously but with smiles made kindly and indulgent through the mellowing of time-a certain journalis t w ith whom I of t en came to literary grips in the early days in New Amsterdam He was a gentleman for ever in fear of offending who lo v ed doing homa g e to t h ose in high places, who preferred to praise rather than adminis t er a s alut a r y drubbing, and who dreaded standing alone in expressing an cpinion. His favourite phrase was 'It is the consensus of opinion". Indeed, he w rote as though he had carried out a private Gallup Poll on every occasion before taking up hi s pen I remember, too-in Trinidad this time-another gentleman, a sub editor, who suffered from a somewhat different type of malady. His took the form of overcautiousness-an over-cautiousn ess v e rging on neurosis. This is the sort of thing that often happened: I w ould submit an article which pro vided it was not too vitriolic-it often was-he would accept. But before it was published he would summon me to his office for "a friendly chat" in the courSe of which he would (with a continuous friendly smile) point out where one or two "minor amendments" might not be ami ss. Would I object, he would suggest, if he inserted "a little phras e" here or "jus t a word there? Not wis hin g to have my article turned down (it wa s bringing me in five dollars), I would protest but agree. The result of the s e conference w as as follows. Let us, for the sake of argument say that I had written i n my article something like t h is: "Mr. Jones is an ass Mr. Brown i s a renowned idiot and Mrs. G r een a nin compoop." Profound truths incidentally of whi c h the public ought to be made aware. Anyway, this i s how my statements (after sub-editing) would read in print: "Mr. Jones, it might appear, is an ass. Mr. Bro wn, it would seem, is a renowned idiot and Mrs. Green it could be said, a nincompoop." The point I am trying to make is th2.t I consider such writing bogus, and I am not concerned here with bogus writing or t h e writers who produce it. I am addressing this to writers of integrity-creative writers who really want t o pro duce creations that are hone s t and free of polit e or h y pocri t ical evasions a n d sham language I am a ddressing the writer who feels tha!t the poem or short 1 J 6
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story or novel he is bringing to life is emphatically bis own and not a pastiche of half-veiled cribbings from the works of other writers, not a coUection of cautious cliches-or even sensational cliches-intended to impress but, in actuality, drab or unconvincing I am not address i n g the writer who believes in expressing "the consensus of opinion I am speaking to the writer who loves his own ideas, who respects his own opinions, and is determined. if the heavens cave in, to say what, deep in bis heart-or in his reason-be feels to be the truth about people and things. And now for the question I want to' pose. FO'rgetting the aesthetic aspect of the subject and' fO'rg et t in g the pr ofound and involved-and often obscureopinions adduced by such people as Mr. T S. Eliot and Mr. D S. Savage (in The Withered an excellent book, incidentally), what, from a strictly down-to-earth, practical p oint of view, is the use of criticism to any creative artist and, more especiaIJy, the literary artist? Witihout criticism, I readily admit the artist would be like a man s e aled up in a glass case and left severely to himself in the middle of a public park; even as s uming that he could arrange for the requisite ventillation and other means of keeping alive, and even as suming he were satisfied to be stationary indefinitely, observing what went on outside his prison with the keenest jnterest, he would eventually be overcome by the utter silence, the lack of stimulating commentary from without. So egotistic is the species that without the stimUilus of criticism, be it favourable or adverse the human spirit would wither. Yet apart from mere stimulus, where is the actual gain to the artist? To simplify the matter somewhat. Here is a poem, here a short story, here a novel, produced by a man or woman of poor, middling or high talent. And here comes .our critic who takes it to bits and tens us where it flops and where
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he is good at characterization and bad at construction, or the reverse? If his characterization is poor, then he ought to do something about it. But there it is Mr. Nabob thought he ha s a talent for characterization. If his construction is fau 1 lty then he must strive to do better in thi s respect. But didn't Mr. Pan jandrum say that his story is delightfully constructed? What complicates ma tiers still m o re is that Messrs. Nabob and Pan jandrum-though I may seem to b e poking fun at them-really do know some thing about literature. They are both s ound cl'itics. No reputable journal will employ a critic who lacks a thorough knowledge of his subject, at least not in England and America and Europe (and, I would like to hope not in British Guiana Or tbe West Indies). This being the case, then, the creative writer cannot afford to reject out of hand what has been said about hls work. Unles s he is a producer of popular tripe and writes sol e ly to make a living, being entirely insensible t o ae stbetlic values the views of the critics are bound to make some impression upon him, and if he ha Dpe. n s to be a very sensitive indi vidual he may e v en feel tbat be should take to heart what has been said-with, perhaps damaging results Indeed s ince the best o f the critics insist on ex pressing such completely conflicting views what effect can their pronouncements have on the creator but to confuse h i m? Added to the critics who actually a ppear on the stage, so to speak, there are the backsta g e critics-the publishers r('aders a nd literary advisers, the pundits in editorial offices, the editor s of literary reviews the men who give "advice to c ; eati v e wph ers and w ho s e busines s it is t o si f t the not-so-good from the very-good, and accordingly, decide whether the would be writer makes his bow or remains in backsta g e ob sc urity. Very important gentlemen, these but, like their brothers in the limelight they are human, each with particular likes and dislikes They differ just as fiercely as the public critics. What one may consider venom another may deem the choicest venison A Morning at the Office was turned down by seven of the most reputable London publi shers, o ne of whom said in a brief note to me: "Our feeling is that the material has not been wor ked into a no vel quite successfully". Yet shortly after, the editor of a well kno w n literary review said this in a letter: "I found it most absorbing and a considerable technical achie v ement." In America the MS. wa s rejected by two of the leading publishing houses. One said : "It was a worthy attempt and an interesting one, but I don t believe that the results can be called entirely satisfactory. The re are too many loose threads in your tape s try too much di s proportion of effect and an insistence on the tbeme of social tbat is out o f all pr o portion with its conclusiveness and cogency. Very well. Suppose I were the "very s e nsitive" kind of individual referred to above. Suppose I had not been the nasty, selfopinionated ogre I am, what would have happened? I shou l d have decided that the whole thing was beyond me, just t o o baffling for words, and I should probably h ave taken the MS. and given it a nice, quiet decent cremation. Not, I admit, that this would have 118
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constituted a major loss to the wor:d of literature, but remembering the hys terical praise that hailed the book s appearance in print, what could I feel about the seven publishers who had turned it down? What faith could I put in the opinions of the editors and publishers' readers who had pronounced against it? Indeed, wouldn't I be justified in thumbing my nose even at the critics who were so lavish in their eulogy? Shadows Move Among Toem, despite the overwhelming critical success it won in both England and America, was turned away by the two most distin guished London pUiblishers and two old-established American firms; the editor of one of the latter would have accepted it i f I had agreed to alter the work and give it a sweet, neat, slick Hollywood ending (of course I wouldn't agree 0. Mr. Leonard Woo lf, one evening in December, 1950 shook his head dismally at me, between cocktails, and said: "No, I really think you've gone off the rails this time." And some months later, Miss Marghanita Laski was saying in Observer: "A novel of unexceptional merit". And Mr. C. P. Snow in The Sunday Times: "It is a bad book" How does all this. then, reflect on literary criticism as a whole? Had Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith or Miss Brown been subjected to my experience what conclusions would he or she have come to? Must the creative writer take the critic seriously? Must he look upon critics as people whose opinions deserve careful and constructive consideration? And if so, which group of critics should he heed? The ones that slat e him, otr the ones that pr aise him? How is he to decide which are givir.g him go o d and useful advice and which misleading him? Since critics are really just ordinary human beings with temperaments that vary. with individual idiosyncra s ies, how is the creative writer to know that the remarks directed at his work are the result of calm and detached judgment and not of p e rsonal taste-or distaste? It would be easy for me to end by saying to Messrs Smith and Jones: Take my advice and write as you please. Enjoy yourself with words, expressing what ideas you want to express, and bow you want to e x prc:-ss them and treat the critics as academic entertainers to divert rather than edify you. But that would be to set myself up as an arbiter of the creative writer's outlook. I should be guilty of just what I am quarrelling with the critics for doing. Therefore my final word must be: Ignore me 119
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FROM RALEGH TO CAREW .JJl.aui The Books of Guiana by A. J. SEYMOUR In this address I shall do two or three things, I wan l t to look at the books of B.G., which I have no doubt you nearly all know and have nearly all read and enjoyed; and I want to point out that the past 20 to 30 years we have had Guianese for the most part writing these books themselves. __ in other words, Guianese writing is emerging. And the second point is the P.E.N. one, that these books from RaJegh to Carew in this unending line, represent the free play of intellect upon the problems and life and scenery of Guiana. May this tradition grow of the free uncensored play of intellect upon our sights and sounds. Suppose we were to p l ace on a great bookshelf the considerable number of books and reports wanten over the centuries about this country, we would find that the heroine always has been Guiana in o[le of her myriad aspects, the country, her people and resources, and that there is now a total image, built of many men's visions and perceptions, but clearly discernible to all who come and ask "What is this country, Guiana ?" We call this survey "From Ra1 egh to Carew", but so steady is the stream of books from the printing presses, and so con side rable is the literary vigour of our writers, that that name will be out of date immediate l y and the neat symmetry of the design broken. What would we place on the Guiana bookshelf? The novels, the pO(:ltry, the histories, the so cial studies, the reports of commis sions like those of Evans, Venn, Paro and McGale the travel books from Water ton, Swan and Zalra F r e eth, the winners o f ].i, terary competitions like Sadeek, Allsopp, Caviglioli, and for inspiration we should go back past Walter Ralegh, that great publicist to the mythical figure of Amalivaca and the rock-writing or timehri, found on our cliff-faces and our rocks. Whatever has been written about Guiana with any kind of lit e rary merit should be on the bookshelf, where ever you have a survey of information put together with a grain of imagination. Perhaps I should dwell faT a moment on this point. There is a famous book on Brazil with the En glis h translation named "Rebellion in the Back lands." Euclides da Cunha a military engin e er was sent to stamp out a revolt in a remote part of Brazil which had been caus e d by a religious fanatic, and when the mission wa s compl et ed he found that in his report it was necessary, if he wanted to cover the multiform aspects of the campaign to include the story of the soil and vegetation of the region. an a ccount of the growth of the peoples and their strange proclivity to attacks of religious enthusiasm. The report be came one of the classics of modern Brazil. There is no one single Guianese work which I can properly compare with "Rebellion in the Backlands but the prin ciple of the great range of sensibility i s the same In the same way, we will have to include mention of adventures on the high savannahs the haunts and adven tures of diamond seekers following; a far shout, and at the other end of the spec trum, the careful analysis of the World Bank Mission. The unconscious heroine 120
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in aU these stories is always Guiana. Ra:egh first set the fashion for us when he referred in 1596 to Guiana as a maiden who had nOit yet lost her maidenhood. and his publicity report on T he D i scoverie of Guiana" ended for all t ime the secrecy desired so much by tbe early travellers. In the words of Webber he focussed attention of the whole world "on the low lying fabulous country to be found between the Amazon and the Orinoco." The book was a bestseNer trans lated into all the European languages and into Latin as wen. The point is made that so popular was the enthusiasm that the organisers of the expedition of the Mayflower hes itated for a while. Should they press on with their adventure to North America. or should they go South? What an exciting prospectthati the Pilgrim Fathers may have anohored of! the Desakepe instead of rthe shores of Massachusetts, to have found death or undying glory in the country of Guiana, or anchored a new Empire here. On reflection, bowever-perhaps the considera tion was that high civilisation grew best then in the temperate climate. who Fathers decided against Guiana and the pages of history were written in the present orthodox or even classical manner But there is a sense in wMch the heroine of our s aga has always beckoned to a succession of peoples, both humble settlers like the immigrants coming hopefully to Sadeek's "New Land. or the high adventurer s who wish like our mundane porknockers to unlock the myth of the golden city in one or other of its forms. What is true is that many have cast longing eyes at this narrow-waisted body of land on the South American coastland. And we are still unlocking the story. Over the centur ies w e ha v e had a variety of b o oks b y d octors and adminis trators and s o ldiers (like Pin c kard, and St. Clair), governors with a literary flair like Clementi, magistrates and sheriffs like Des Voeux and Kirke. Even in the pages of Shakespeare and Milton t h ere a z e tantalising gIimpses of unspoiled Guiana as gold and bounty, or the place where people have their heads below their shoulders, in the words of Othello 1'her e are priests who write abroad and recount the problems they encounter in this new land they have come to chr istianise. But it is only in the past 30 years that Guianese themselves ; persons born amid the sights and sounds of this country and owing allegiance to no other place. have taken up their pens and begun to record their emotional tran scripts of our reality. What is the range of the volumes in the Guiana bookshelf? How shall we value our heritage? Where is it locked away? Is it true that it is continuousJv being destroyed by damp and termites and the depredation of bourgeois civil servants who feel it their duty to protect the fair name of certain outstanding Guianese families? What do the leaders of each genera tion. like Sir Eustace Woolford, or Sir Frank McDavid do with the vast accumulation of the official papers and letters they have had to deal with, in the course of their administra tion? How shall the social history of this country be written if we lack the bio graphies and letters of our great and even our merely able men who have found their lives coinciding with the changes in our country's history? It is true that we have Cheddi Jagan's "Forbidden Freedom" and Ashton Chase's "133 Days" and Martin Carter's "Poems of Resistance" as part of our political history but I ask for memoirs. I ask questions like these-"Sir Frank McDavid. how did 121
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Guiana move away from the shadow o f Imperial Treasury control in the eighteen years you presided as Colonial Treasurer over the financial history of Guiana?" "Sir Eustace Woolford how did y o u pa s s w inevitably and smoothly from a stormy petrel alwa y s knocking in p rotest upon the doors of the Colonial Office, to one of the conservative guardians of our political tradition?" I think of people like A. A. Thorne a n d A. B. Brown and you can think of so many others whose lives coincided with c h ang e s i n th e s ocial h i story of this country. Where are the r e cords of these lives? I wish als o that we would have more children's books, for use in schools as texts and for read i ng for pl e asure. I can only think of a few. In 1914 Mrs. Gertrude Shaw either collected or dressed up some stories about the Witch of Baracara, the Ogre of K y k o v e ral and others which my generation would call jumbie stories. They are calculated to raise the hair on your scalp These were published as "West Indian Fairy Tales." I dbn't know how many others we have until we come to ee! este D o lphin's delightful broadcasts of how the children of Guiana came here from th e ir respective homelands in Asia, Europe and Mrica; and Joy Allso p p' s "Teddy the Toucan," which dips as delightfully into the store of Amerindian legends to tell u s why the toucan has a place aD the B.G. stamps. Where the histories are concerned I al w ays think of Netscher, that writer of sturdy his torical pros e as a g reat s m ok er of pipes, d r E aming back upon the plantations he knew had once existed along the river banks of Guiana, and which are lost to memo ry Engine ers e x p l or i n g for bauxit e or other minerals come back from the thick overgrowth o f jungle to tell us tl :ey have s.)en straight culverts and traces of drain s a n d b rickw o rk which bear out the account Nets c h e r gives of the abandoned plantations. Ne t s c h er's jud g ments are sound and his feet are always on the ground Webber's Centenary History has been the only gateway for many Gui anese into their pas t but his work suffers from being that of a journalist. He seems to have sat down and digested the newspapers of year after year and what' he gives us is a series of annual surve y s of e v ents, with the trivial and significant lying side by side as strange bedfellows in his prose. There is l ittle of higher philosophical anaylsis, relating the events to the background of trends which pattern history. So he is r e adab ; e w ith hi s information but at the expense of the wisdom you expect to e xt r act from events Rodway is primarily the historian even thou g h he wrote a novel "In Guiana Wilds." One gains the impress i on of painstaking research, the careful unearthing of facts. His critics claim that he is unreliable and that upon a few facts he is apt to spin a large web of spec u lation. I myself have been so grateful for the information compiled in "The Story of Georgetown ( w hich incidentally must very soon be revi s ed and reprinted unless a generation of Guianese are going to lose the knowled g e of v heir hedtage), compiled in the three volume History of Brit:ish Guiana" published by J Thomson in Georgetown 1893 and the book on "Guiana British Dutch and French" published by T. Fisher Unwin 1912. This may make me appear heretical but I found the three volume history difficult to get throu g h becaus e of what appears to be a lack of historical method. 122
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I shall just iIIustrate what I mean. Some years I was engaged on a series of radio talks on B.G. history and I was exasperated to find nowhere at the time a sum mary of the steps by which the plantation owne r s gradually obtained a v oice in the conduct of their own affairs and wrested power gradualIy away from the company which had made the settlemen ts in this country. My comment is that the matter has not been fully organised for the reader or t h e student, But on the other hand as material becomes and the EngJish records appear, we find this type of summary ap pear ing. For example, the chapters in Rodway's on the Three Rivers in 1796 and the coming of the English provide this diges tion of fact which is both s cientifi c and arti s tic. But I must hasten to say that I am no historian and that m y would be strictures may be groundless before Rodway's de f enders. It is however undeniab le that he has put all of us in his debt for a great deal of valuable research. There are many historical s t udies in the Gu iana Bookshelf. Clementi's Constitut i onal Histo r y is usefu l but written from the outside in. It is chronologi cal material careful:ly made objective for the most part. Of course, the author states in his p r olo gue that the B.G. story is a "signal illustration at danger invol ved in the premature grant of representative institutions and in the control of finance by eleoted legislators not charged with admin i strative respon sibility." He also sets out in a very interesting manner what happened in Guiana "the wheel of constitutional change turns full cycle, from strict control by the Crown to a system which was a parody of sel f-government and thence again to an advanced form of crown wInny administration" the commercial adven ture of a Dutch trading company grew to be a colonial administration, the Dutch methods of colonising were gradually modified under British rule, representa tive institutions on too n arro w a b asis proved incapable of healthy growth, an oliga'rchy of sugar planters came to be a negro dema g ogy, an autocratic execu tive was by degrees so emasculated that it would no longer rule, and at la st Par liament was obliged to intervene in order to sweep away the constitutional eccen tricities which impeded tDe progress of Guiana and restore to its Government the power of governin!; We would wish an early supplement to the Clementi story, showing how the wind of change, begotten of the war, has widened the electorate since that story was written, and brou ght Guiana to the threshold of independence. A historical ana!ysis of the lo c al governme n t pattern has bel!n published by Allan Young. For my purpose let us note that this is a study from the inside out, setting forth in a scholarly and sympathetic way, the approaches-racially, by reason of the need o f water control and social services, and showing the inter play of the many complex forces and faotors. As the co ntents of this work be come more widely known, there will be a clearer ap preciation of the difficulties under which this country labours and the need for the radical change of struc ture in local government. The H i story bookshelf contains many other volumes and historical essays Nath and Ruhoman have written histories of the Indians, Clementi has traced the fortunes of the Chinese. P. H. Daly has published a number o f books on the Heroes. Cameron has published a History of Queen's College and is on the verge 123
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of publishing a history of secondary education. Bunyan has produced a history of the B G. Teachers As socia t lon. And I mustn't forget that children's "Story of Guiana" by Guy de Weever, which for 30 years has p r evented the children in primary schools from suffering fr o m historical starvation. But one wonders whether the historical m e thod, w hich is a marriage of art and science in the compilation and p r esentation of material, has y et fully been applied to the facts and stories of Guiana. So many other names may be called like that of Dalton of whom I find I know so little But this doesn't pretend to be the Encyclopaedia Ouianica. The novels are now a full compartment, thanks to the prolific pen of Edgar Mittelh o lzer who has produced n i gh on a dozen books on B.G. alone They are too well known to detail here ranging as they do from life in the city and in New Amsterdam to life on the CoreIlltyne and up the Berbice River, the locale where perhap s his mo s t suc ces sful book Shadows has been based. Most interesting are the Kaywana s e r ies, in which for three centuries he traces the for tunes of an old Dutch family, shifting thei r residences from one county to an other, and bringing out characteris t ic a fte r characteristic, of brutality and sexual per v ersion, showing that s l avery pro du ce s the w o rst effects on human nature, but also displaying s trength of family pride and th e need for weakness to be eschewed, as the genera t ion s pass into th e silence of deat h Of course in his first two books to be published, "Wild Coast and "Black Midas" Jan Carew has also begun to exploit these themes of savagery, in the goldfield s and the jungle of emotions to be found in adolescence and in shattered families on the coastal areas But in the novels on the Guiana bookshelf there are already a number of amateur productions pioneering the way for these new professional types who write for the English and American readers. Who remembers today that James Rodwa y published in 1899 a novel called "In Guiana Wilds"-a study of two women in the Fisher Unwin Overseas Library Series? Lacking in dramatic ten sion, accordin g to professional standards, this story is t a ntalisingly interesting in its glimpses of Amerindian and missionary life in the Interior, and its des criptions of scenery. Actually a more lavish use of the painter's palette would have produced a better book. We may also have forgot t en that rather shapeless serial on life on sugar est a tes and the problems o f the indeIllture system, written by A. R. F. Webber in 1917. There are not many copies of "Those that be in Bonda ge" to be found in B.G. today, a n d per h aps its fate is to be a collector's curiosity. But here is evidence of the story-teller's ability, undisciplined though it may be, and wi th the thread of the narrative winding in various directions. Of course there is the classic, "Green Mansions" by W. H. Hudson which creates in the mind of the reader the stereotype of the wistful simple jungle girl who Jives remote from civi l i s ation and who yields her heart without reserve to the mysterious stranger who comes into her father's house One may mention the long short story published by Albert Ferreira "A Sonata is Simple" 124
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based on the life of the late Philip Pilgrim, and one should add the chapters from unpublished novels which have appeared in Kykoveral such as P. H. Daly's "The Bearded Trees," and Ivan Van Sertima's "The Lost and the Lonely," Sheik Sadeek in 1959 won the Jagan Gold Medal for Literature with an unpub lished novel "The New Land" in which he records the hopeful and eventful arrival in Guiana of an immigrant family from India and traces the fortunes of the s econd ge n eration de s cribing the vicissitudes of life on the sugar estates. We have seen a n d know of furt her novels and novelettes in preparation by Wilson Harris and Martin Carter. The saying is that every poet in the West Indies has a manu s cript n ovel in his suitcase when he sets out for London, and indeed befo r e that. In the poems of Guiana we have a full portfolio. N. E. Cameron when he was a student at Cambridge realised to his dismay how little he knew of the literary work written in his country, and on his return home he carried out considerable research and compiled the anthology, "Guianese Poetry" covering the hundred year period 1831-1931. O ther anthologies hav e been selected since 1931, but they have all climbed on Cameron's shoulders with regard to the early poetry. There have been a Kykoveral antholo gy and another selected by training college teachers for their special use in primary schools All go back to Colonist writing like a young Wordsworth in 1832 but turning to his beloved England for his inspiration. What I caH t he g enius of the place first be g ins to exact its tribute and exert its influence, in 1838 when a Buxton headmaster Simon Christian Oliver finds it in his heart to write a poem about August the First 1838, Emancipation Day. Oliv er was born in Grenada. We pass through Dalton (1858) and Do n (1873) to Leo (1883) whose name was Egbert Martin and in whom our poetry first reaches After Leo we need not pause much until we come to Walter MacA. Lawrence and to the modem school in the 1920's and 30's To an audience interested in literature, there seems little point in rehearsing the many opportunities for publication, and the many booklets and poems which have appeared s ince then Suffice it to note tha t the poem has become one of the most popular vehicles of artistic expression in Guiana, that our legends are being shaped into metrical forms that a body of verse has been built up which is amon g the most significant in the British Caribbean, and that opportunities for publishing poetry have been extended from Guiana, to all the territories in the West Indies, in the Miniature Series and then in the periodical Kykoveral. Names would include those of Martin Carter, Wilson Harris and the present writer, and the work produced has been into Czech, French, German and Italian anthologies. I should mention here my admiration for the work done by that Dean of Guianese Letters, Vincent Roth, in editing and publishing a large number of texts which preserve for us the reactions of a number of pe r sons who have come to this country over the past centuries. In the Guiana Edition, we have the 125
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impressions of that factor Adrian Van Berkel based upon his travels in the last quarter o f the 17th century; o f Dr. viewing colonial l ife at the end of the 18th century; of that articled cleik to a m er chant house, Henry BoHngbroke. who car ried on Pinc kard s story; of the soldier St. Clair who travelled overland to Berbice u sing planters' houses as inns, for the three rughts in his journey in the first decade of the 19th century. The Guiana Edition is rich also in the accounts of the experiences of a clergyman in the middle of the century, Rev. Wallbridge on Rev John Smith published in 1848. and of the Demerara Magis trate Wm. Des Voeux and the sheriff Henry Kirke, both writing towards the end of the 19th century. The l ate J. Graham Cruickshank has set out for us in his foreword to the Guiana Edition the reasons for praising the rescue operation which Vincent Roth has so ably performed-the rarity of the best travel books, after being out of print for decades. the high prices asked for those copies avail able, the destruction of many books by damp, fire, storm, vermin, and last of all human ne glect. Had it not been for the Guiana Edition, even the inadequate knowledge we now have as a literate population of our own past history, would have been lacking. I find myself wishing that before Vincent Roth lays down his editor s pen, he will pu t us further in his debt by adding to this valuable series, the Guiana Edition, the collecton of despatches and letters which that great Guian ese administrator Laurens Storm vans Gra vesande wrote back to the Directors in Holland. In recent years we have had addition s to tWs series of the works of the Schomburgk brothers, Robert and Richard, who have memorably recorded the life in 1830's and 40's in Guiana as they found it. But always the peoples and the natural Wstory of Guiana have attracted attention, from the days of the Wanderings of Charles Waterion as he roamed, even before the Schomburgk brothers, over this country in the first quarter of the 19th century, and we must not forget the book "Canoe and Camp Life" by the discoverer of Kaieteur, Barrington Brown. What these pers ons recorded in their Journals and books have perhaps grown insen sib l y into the social studies o f Raymond Smith in "The Negro Family in Guiana" and Zara Freeth's impressions of life to be found in "Run Swiftly Deme r ara." Michael Swan who completed the official handbook on B.G. for the Colonial Office has also vied with Waterton and the Schomburgks in his travel book, "The Marches of EI Dorado" where in limpid prose he mixes anecdotes of the Rupununi and the Mazaruni with his own fresh r l escriptions and reactions to the ascent of Roraima and the beautiful songs 01 the Guiana birds. This transition from the naturalistic to the sociolog,..cal 1S inevitable as rthe peoples in Guia na develop from the passive recipients of the forces of history to the agents of history themselves. Let us not forget in the considerable literary tradition to which we are pointing, that very many of the reports prepared on the problems of Guiana. have their own sociological analyses. It may be the West India Royal Commis sion, or the Robertson Commission, or the World Bank Report, it may be the reports by McGale and Paro and J ephcott coming to 10 specific analyses of 126
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unemployment or cost of living or the part to be played in developing young people; it may be Evans considering the possibilities of settlement in the hinter land, or Venn musing upon the best for changing conditions in the su gar industry-but always these scientifically -trained minds bring to their tasks of an alysi s an apparatus of enquiry by which we see a philosophical conception of where we are heading, as a potential nation We can note the p roj ection of pa s t into futr"Jl re in their pages and we can gauge the cultura l matrix and the sociology which will yield th e deep insights of our l iterature. One final word This hasn't pretended to be catalogue or a bibliography but rather a per s onal reaction, full of my own idiosyncracies, to the Guiana Bookshelf, and as they say at the bottom of commercial accounts, all errors and omissions must be excepted. There is one que st ion I have asked myself. Lookin g at the Guiana Bookshelf, what has bee n the most powerful applicat i on of ideas to Guianese society? Here is an inert form of land mass and popular tradition a p d we are always seeking for pointers from the past to lead u s into tpe futur e Are we always to be beguiled by the EI Dor ado myth, the idea of easy discovery of wealth. which lures us on and which seems t o dispose of th e necess i ty for h a rd work? Of cours e this is not the only way of jUdgin g our literary heritage. We can also ask, what man's vision of our future as an artistic who le has been most penetrating. Let us look at a few possibilities and compare them one ag ainst the other. There is Gravesand e 's ce aseless work of 40 years in the middle of t he 18th century de veloping our potential, promoting immijlration from the West Indies settling our boundaries integra t in g the Amerindians into community life. There is Hutchinson's vision in the 20th centur y of puttin[\ bridles across the course of our rivers to the certainty of water for our coastal crops There is the lifetim e of endeavour of the youn g Gui anese engineer, R. V. Evan Wong, based on his fine dream. to find a so l ution to Guian a's prob l e ms by using the vast forest potential and developing woodpulp. There is Jook Campbell's revolu tion from within, o f the Bookers Empire which he inheri te d, sO that the large com p lex or ganisation became more of a force to develop Guiana a nd Guianese potential. These are but three or four of the visions affecting us all and our future, which can be fou r d within the Bookshelf As our Guianese graduates return home wit h quickened minds they will bring to bear upon our society th e full power of their will and intelle cts, and we shall have more v i sions befor e u s to lead us into the future. The books of Guiana represent the herit ag e which we have received from the past and the y stand for the free play of the intellect over the problems and life of the communities which live here. As this country moves forward to in dependence, what is important is to ensure that freedom of discussion and opinion is maintained a nd extended, and that the free play of ideas and com ments is available to all the people of this country. This, of course, is one of the main aJrns objects of the P.E.N that freedom of expre s sion should exist, and it is on this note I wish to end the talk on the books of Guiana. 127
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Chaucer had these problems ..... ON WRITING CREOLESE by D A. WESTMAAS When it first occurred to me to wr u te a regular newspaper column in the local variant of Eng lis h, I found m y self up ag ainst a problem of considerable difficult y From time to tim e in the past I had come up against the effor t s of previou s writers to e v o l ve a suitable o l r thogra p hy, but none of them satisfied me as being suffic i e n tl y n ear t o the w or d s re p r esented for the uninitiated to be able to make even an a pp ro x imat e g uess W i thin r ece nt years the r e had be e n few writers habituaUy usin g the v e rnacular and I found that spellings which mor e or less a d eq uatel y represented local speech around the turn of the century were no l on ge r satisf act ory as s i nce t h at time popular educa t ion, the radio and th e cinema had effected c o nsiderable chan ges in the local working-man's vocabulary. Cruikshank's little book B lac k Talk, which was publi s hedi in 1916 but h ad been in process of compi l ation f or man y y ears, is a n example in point. The reader will quickly recognise that the Georgetown labouring-man's speech ha s mad e much pro g re s s in sophi s tication since the days when for example, the v erb "to nyam" w as in g eneral use in the City meanin g "to eat"; or the word "Massa" was the u s ual salutation accorded a superior. The n again, I noticed that a mere matter of ten miles made a difference to the pronunciation of a word: the wo r king-man of Buxton has a noticeably different accent from t he town e e labourer. Berbicians have another accen t again. Generall y speaking there is a greater percentage of African words surviving in the coun t r y distri ct s than in Geo rget o wn whi c h i s wha t you w o uld expect; and of course East Indian (estate) Eng lish is another mat t er again. Here also Cruik shank s littl e b r o c hure i s def e ctive, as it does not m e ntion w here his phrases come from or are in g e n eral use whether and in which t own or country dis trict. The g e neral i m p ression I gain e d from it was that for the most part he has recorded t h e sp eech of count r y p eople. For conveni e n ce, th ere f ore, out of aH these I was forced to pick the one which I h e ard around m e in G e org e town a n d which was alway s a v ailable for study when I was in doubt. I then found it necessary to evolve my own s pellin g None o f the previous wri t e rs had con sidered creo1ese sounds on thei r own m e rits ; th ey w ere con t en t >to adapt t h e Eng lish b y in s ertion of inverted com mas and apos t ro phes, s o tha t, f or e x amp l e, the sent e nc e What kind of thing is this?" became W h a kin' 0 t'in g (is) dis?" I found several objections to thi s procedure Firs tl y th e townee w o rkin g -man does not say "Wha' but "Wuh". Secondly the reader seein g t he wO'rd k in" is tem p ted to gj.ve th e short vowel sound to the "i", and pronounce i t as in t he phrase "kith and kin". Again whenev e r creoJese drops the "f" of "of", the r esulting sound is short flat "a" rather than "0". Yet another consideration w as that most creolese sentences have a rhythm and swing about them which is very poo ldy conveyed in the ex-128
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ample of spelling given above. I therefore felt that the sentence was far better rendered as "Whu kyna-ting dis?" And finally a not un imp or t ant point was that the elimination of as many inverted commas and apostroph e s as possible made the type-setter s job ten time s easier. I made it a rule to represent the sound phonetically whenever I could do so without g oing too far out of my way. Local speech drops so many endings that to scrupul ously put in every curlicue and ser ip h would have been to create a type-sett e r's nightmare. Phrase s that were in vogue thirty years ago are no longer so. Even in my own boyhood I remember quite well hearing the phrase "amo n g you" used to indica te refer e nce to mOre than one person. This particular idiom was in u s e even among midd!e-class groups, but as a rule they preferred "you-all". Thus, a working-man of Vhirty years ago might say "Among-you din go to schoo l". where the middle-clas s man would say "You-all didO" . . Nowadays "among you" has all but vanished from the common speec h its place being taken so far as I can discover by the equally amazing "Alyou-dis" ("All-you-this"). "You all" is still heard occasionally among middle-class youth. (I understand, b y the way, that it is in common use in the Southern States of the U.S.A. The use of "me" for "I" was quite c ommon in the City when I was a boy; today reflecting the general educational ad vance. it i s used only occasionally in Georgetown but has a vogue in the c ountry. It is impossible to deal sat i sf actorily with the subject of creolese in a single article. Remembering all the phrases w orth remark would alone take a month. To mention onJy those that come to my mind a s I write. there is the Elliptic Marvel "Is who ... ? i s y ou ... ?" Transla ted into E nglish, it g oes some thing like this: "Wh o is that . .?; is it you that ... ? There is the Wonder "A h a d-was-t o . (do somethin 8 o r other to meet an eme rge ncy)"; I still have no idea how the word "was" got i n to the set-up. Likewise with the Trapeze Performer "An-to-besides"; where the "to pi.cks y ou up up at the top of the swing fr o m the "and", s o to speak ; and pitches you clean over the bar of th e "besides" coming up to meet you. And wha t aboUit the Oassic Res pons e to an e nquiry after one's h ea lth : "Adeh-man-Adeh! ("I' m t'here. man I'm there!" meaning "I'm still in exis tence ")? Or its variant "waan-waan!" ("One-one meaning the speaker is just about creeping a l on g through thi s life step by step) ? This double word "Adeh" (pronounced swiftly, as one word). will al so serve to make a most imp o rtant point in another connexion. There are two ways of pronouncin g the First Personal P r cnoun in creolese. You may say "Ah", or you ma y use the ordinar y I-sound. But in p hrases ore particular use seems to be obligaJtory. "Adeh" would lose all its peculiar bo uqu et creol if the ordinary I so und were substituted. On the ot he r hand. in the sente n ce "I en kay" ("I don't care"), use of the A-sound would be equally out of p lace,-and, b y the way most writers w hen repr e senting this A-s o und spell it wiJth a n "h" thus: "Ah". I preferred to wr1te the plain capital A, beca use I c onsider that the avera g e person reading "Ah" aloud te!":ds to as-pira t e the "h". and because the normal pronounciation of the capital letter alone exaotly repres e nts the required sound. 129
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Then there is my friend Elastic Egbe rt Vhe double-word "eh-eh", which can mean "yes or "no", or be a mere exclamation of wonder, surprise, con tempt, anger, in fact nearly anything. In normal spelling of this word, the "h" is only there to sbow tbat tbe "e" is short; it is not pronounced. Tbe word means "yes" when an aspirate is s ounded in front of the second syllable, whicb receives tbe acc ent and is a s emi tone bigher, tbus: "eh-eh". It is then equivalent to the Eng lish affirma t ive "Aha". It means "no" when the accent is equal and the second syllable is a tone or two lower It i s an exclamation when the s tresse s are equal and the tone is the same, or the second sylla ble is drawn out. Yet another fascination i s the number of pronlu!nciations of the simple word "Going". When making a spe cial e ffort .to be correm, as in reading tbe newspaper aloud the average working-man will give you a full-blooded "going" Normally. pronunciation ranges from "goin'" tbrough "gwine" and "gyne" to "gun". There is even a tend e ncy to slur the ending of all these words endin{ them up in the nose. In creolese "Are you going home?" may be "You goin'. home ... gwine -home ... gyne -home?" (Note the hyphens; they indicate a verv definite phrasing). But in this usa g e "gun" may not be used; thus you never hear "You-gun-horne?" All forms of the word. including "gun". are used when in tention in tbe immediate future is meant; but in this use "gun" is far the most popular form. Thes e are only some of the tbings I discovered as I began to write. Of course tbere was no cons c iou s formulation of a set of rules before beginning to do so; I simply listened to tbe phrases and decided as the y came alon g what was tbe best way of putti n g them o n pap er. Let me conclude with the at:ecdote about the planter wbo found creol ese so expressive becau s e every when he w as still in bed there would come a knock on the door Planter (rolling over sleepily) Is who? Maid: Is me. P.: Is wba? M.: Is cawfee! 130
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GUIANA TODA Y. by DENIS WILLIAMS Each day we die a little the sun. By noon the positive is scorched into a pointless neutral and a whole population gasps, its herut turning dully on a still sharp point. This is the first thing. The most important We are still dominated by the sun-strangers in a la:nd we call our own. There is no Guianese people. Only an accumulation of persons end products of a various history Images in mud of the distant alien. Here patterns ldll us, and the spiritual of toreigners forever CO!D.SeDJt to the act. In coherence, apishness, sentimentality, uncreativeness, And always the blighting frustration of a land which has got us down. Think for instance on our emo tional life caught up within a mesh of influences There is some pattern here We mob the returning prize fighter in an ecstacy o f appreciation, and mourn the death of our only composer We no longer return from "away" with unfamiliar accents (not generahly anyway) bult are expected in a vague way to be better fellows for it, polished, cultured. "He would do well abroad" and so on! Al ways the sanction and blessing of the "civilised" countries, which is our hall mark, for want of native values -a tacit admission, of course, that there is no good here. The emotional cohesion is only superficial resting inevitably on alien standards. A collective locaJ response to anything a t all is simply unimagin able. The truth is, we are a Jot of per s ons and a lot of races, with a super village mentality. To begin with, we are in no way at all adapted to this lana in which we live the first thing the savages does. Our dress is ludicrou s, as are most of our other habi 'ts. We aillow Ithe sun to wilt our inspiration daily instead of enjoying it as the Mexicans do (same hours or work &c. ). We eat unintelligently for our climate and build our houses even more so. In all the innumerable trivia of our own social and domestic life we cha i n ourselves to our irritating string of invalid habits which are unfriendly to the human in these latitudes and which consequently rob us of the impulse toward tha t cumulative finesse which is the art of living among all civilised peoples. There is no vision here Rather, we cling to a dream of a very negative quality. The person in Guiana looks outward. Naturally. But the aggressive European pattern is al ways strange, aloof and unfriendly. There is no substantial link. Here we are up against history, race and culture. We can never change our spots, never build Georgian townhalls or Renaissance churches, or create the frescoes of Piero deIla so we oreate a myth-an edifice which is nearly secure enough to make us forget our troubled yesterdays in the accomplishment of those peoples most like us. Our real heroes are the American Negro the India:n in Indi a the Chinese in China, and for of indistinct and divers e ori g in Vhe European in the world. Our h e roes function of course in a pu:rely decorative way, showpieces of our different and differing races brilliant enough to cast the sharp r e flections in whioh we bask. Actually their existence is quite removed from ours and touch 131
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us in no other than in a v ery r emote and uni v ersal sense. Ne v ertheless the dream persists and with the inevitable flow of "coloured" magazines, etc. the nightly oriental music and periodic rites, the "national dress the special holidays, special pages in the news special graveyards "that the pattern may subsist that the wheels may turn and still be forever still." Our insularity is paradoxical. So our position remains immovable. B ut our smug edifice is strong only art the top. At the b o ttom it rests on the cal y pso wpidh is t he faint heart of all Guiana. But it rests heavily, and one common touch would yet fail to make our whole worl d kin. Undoubtedly there is a Guianese pattern, -a part of the whole which is an assured West Ind i an pattern. ThaJt faint residue which would surely continue to drift around if the Caribbean Sea should tonight d.rown our posturing and "fantastic tricks" in a single movement of history. But he J e in Guiana it is too and impalpable to amount to anything like an influence, far less a way of life and even much less a contribution to the universa l spirit of all men. It is a prostrate frustlraited something lying beetle-like 001 its back, awaiting the touch of the interested hand A considerable point is, how good is it for the beetle to be tilted over by any but its own e1fOlrt. II Someone said a nation gets what it wants True. It falls in very beauti fully with Lamarck's conception of creative evolution. The tragedy lies always, of COUi."3e, in wanting the troublesome things. The will of a nation is certainly a very powerful thing, and I believe that Michelangelo grew out of Renaissance Italy in precisely the same way a s Lamarck s hypothetical giraffe grew a long neck. I know of no better explanation. When Italy grew full enough of great men she ceased any longer to produce Leonardo Dante Raphael; and the usual horde of imitators and mummifiers closed the lid on her creativeness. There is a signal in Guiana today which might well end in paradox. The prophets are beginning to arise They wHI of course suffer the commoDi fate of the breed But the question is does Guiana really want these men. Let us face it at once. We are so far an uncreative pe<'p le b y the only standards we know historic. We have no folk l i fe and consequentl y no folk art. So we start Without entrails. The calypso unifyer of all West Indian people s is net of this soil. Our building songs and shanties (at best an expression of only one facet of Gui anese life) are now only very interesting ethno g rapmca'l pieces. The mood persis t s in various pale atavist;lls cumfa dancin g shaking, etc., but these things are regional an a invalid. The things we have al i I brou ght with us s t ill remain poten tial. There ha s been no marriage consequently no issue. Meanwbile our prophet has characteri s tically been keeping his nose to the wind and out of the complex of influences wi t hin and without, is seeking a new orientati-on -the orientation from which "Guiana" will emerge only as legend. Does Guiana really want this man an artist who is not onl y Guianese but a prophet of the whole new world. a believer in the concept of Cosmic Man of which Guiana wirth its diverse bloods could be such an apt birth-bed 132
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I think there can be no Guianese spirit as such. The idea presupposes an emotional unity which could be the result of only a greater unity race, religion, art. None of these could ever constitute a single ideology in Guiana, so the possibility of a truly Guianese culture seems to me to be a very remote one. Be sides, the picture of the Guianese is proof perfect. He is a man riding a 'ticker' bike or a Vauxhall toward an indistinct Nirvana quite unoccu pied, with any convictions of 'high' art. The snobbery of opera houses and museums touches him not at all, is not really a part of this goal on which his unconscious eye is fixed, while he weaves the pattern which will be the con cern of history -not of the self-conscious intellectual in his midst. This, of course, is asit should be. The civilisations of Europe have sanctified Ali placed it in a different and distant little world. the Gothic Cathedral mummified in the museum. The European no longer lives art. It exists on the surface of his life, a beautiful cream, a veneer He is going toward no Nirvana. The Guianese, like all the other peoples of our New World has been emancipated from a background, his history short and unformed. He is a young man with a hope. His coherent shiftings constitute his common denominator with all the rest of Columbws' world Here blood is new in a way that does oot fo for Europe. Here is clay for the sculpture which will be Tomorrow's Man. The man with a different and complex yesterday, seeking other values, explod ing myths, creating a way of life human and universal. This mid-twentieth cen tury has already questioned the idea of air-tight national pidgeonholing of peoples, and nothing now happens anywhere which is not the concern of the whole world. Take the artist as pilot. Take the European painter. In a way he died toward the end of the 19th century. A part'of him did, anyway his smug in sularity. For the first time in his history he looked out on the world. Shyly at first toward the Art of Japan. He absorbed the influence of the Japanese print. Then he discovered the primi tive African Negro, pre-Columbian, Oceanic sculpture; the art of Siberia, cave paintings. These influences were pro found, infused European art with red blood. The artist was the first to sense the coming significance of the peoples who played the role in contemporary art that they are about to play in contemporary liv.ing. The European prophets. In this western hemisphere, here in these Americas, there is all the potential. The human lives here who has all the atavisms in his blood. Guianese man is a microcosm of American man, capable of fashioning the universal. A fascinating prospect! Beneath this sun which is all the colour of the world walks the man who is all the races of he earth. His hope is founded on marriage. His borne the world 133
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ROGER MAIS by FRED WILMOT The oak was strong and sturdy, and grew, resisting storm and high wind. The buffetings of nature harmed neither its growth nor its form, tested it and found it worthy. One day it came to the end of its t ime, sickened, and died, wasted and ravaged leaving behind the memory of itts strength, an echo of its beauty in the golden leaves it had strewn at its feet, the hardy seeds it had cast at its own roots. Some men grow like trees. They send down firm roots in the soil, seeking the nourishmen t and warmth and strength that comes from their native earth. They are connected to their earth by a rich taproot. strong, seeking, that draws from the richest places of nourishment. And they give as much, if not mOi re, than they take For they change the food that nourishes their minds. It becomes tran smuted by the chemistry of th eir imagination, and is made that much richer. Some men grow like trees and such men are like Roger Mais. Those closest to Roger during the wild excitement of his living days could not have known that searching taproot he sent down into the earth of things. It was there, but it would not show because until years enabled him to understand the h appening it is likely that he did not know it was thet=e himself. Instead those around him must have seen a restless hungering, a wild, nagging, insatiable wanting for something else. For Roger was a seeker, and as a seeker, he could be known only to a stranger who s aw in his eyes the endless asking that marks the seekers. He grabbed at life and living, twisting and turning it, tearing at it, look ing for the at:he and pain of it. In the writings of Thomas Wolfe there is a great dominant question mark, the symbol of the seeker who asked why. There is the s t ormy question the looking at and touching of things that excite. In his writings was the gre!lJt, blu s tery fear of not knowing, and it was shaping and reshaping of words into n e w meanings into the dark music of language that marked his w ork. Through the passages of h i s writings, majesty strode. I remember Roger speaking about Thomas Wolfe and recognising in his w ords and writing that majesty of words. I remember reading Roger's writings, and hearing in his words that same majesty. Because he was a seeker too. Roger became anything he wanted to many things he did not know he was becoming He became a famed Jamaican in 1944 whe n v/ith that impatient, r estless anger he focussed on the British Empire his caustic concentration "Now We Know", which he wrote in Public Opinion, Jamaica's nationalistic news p aper, drew on himself the mark of the protestor and earned the wrath of Governor Richards, the Attorney General the patriotic anger of the Britons in Jamaica. To Jamaic an s the words rang with the poetry of truth and when he was imprisoned for sedition a part of all pro testing Jamaicans served the term with him. Roger had written from a place close to the heart of his people. 134
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That year was Roger's beginning as a figure of importance. At his own expense in 1939, he had published "Face and Other Stories and follow e d it with "Most of All Man" in 1940. They b e came collector s items. The bright spark of notoriety had lit for Roger the small flame of growing fame. Jamaica discovered his way with words and ideas and soft, sensitive feelings .... "I, remembering how .light love hath a soft football, and fleet that goes clicking down the heart's lone and empty street in a kind of spread twilight-nimbus of the mind. and a soft voice of shaken laughter like the wind . . I. remembering this. And remembering that light love is As fragile as a kiss Lightly given, And passes like the little rain Softly down-driven . . Bade love come to you with rough male footsteps Deliberate That hurt to come, And hurt to go . . And bade love speak to you With accents terrible. and slow. Roger was a blustering and loud fellow, was described as rude and bump tious. And he was. He had within him a great endless anger; he refused to be lieve that men must be stupid and blind and unfeeling but he accepted it and deJighted in cursing men for it. He had handled ideas with words. touched ideas and felt their texture. got an easy familiarity with them and known them coming through the process of his mind. and worked his a'chemy on them before putting them down on paper and written in soft-spoken beauty .... and remembering that light love is As fragile as a kiss Lightly given. And passes like the little rain Lightly down-driven . . . One day he picked up a pencil. some say at the urging of Edna Manley who handed him this familiar instrument and said "draw something, Roger. draw anytlring:' and drew. It didn't come To him easily, although he drew. 135
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quickly and deftly, with an eye that knew the shapes and forms he drew. Roger drew the hills around him, the hills he had seen in sunshot silence and written about in knowing words ... "All men come to the hills Finally ..... Men from the deeps of the pl:iins of the sea Where a wind-in-the-sail is hope That long desire, and long weariness fulfills Come again to the hills. He drew the heavy, lumping mass of the rulls and from the beginning those who looked afhls. paintings felt he knew the folds of land they had looked at for so long and not seen, and had drawn their quiet strength out of them and put down on canvas. But painting did not come easily to Roger. He spent hours in the Institute of Jamaica, examining the work of other painters giving his great mind a chance to searCh and seek and wonder at the things that moved other men. He understood quickly, intuitively, and scorned his quick, intuitive know ledge, but worked to have it come out of his brush so that it looked and felt right for Roger Mais. He looked into his own country for further inspiration. Out of history he sbaped a play, "George William Gordon", won first prize witb it in a con test run jointly by Public Opinion and the Little Theatre Movement. The play was strong, stark stuff, full of embarrassing truth about men and motives. about the heart of a patriot. It was never produced. Working the play form around in his knowing hands, Roger wrote an otber, "Hurricane" was a powerful work, was produced by the Little Theatre, and was a smashing success. Mais was demonstrably Jamaica's most powerful writer, its only plar.wright of consequence, an outstanding capable writer. He wrote "Atalanta and Calydon", had it produced by the U.C.W.I. Extra Mural Workshop. Roger had become the stormy petrel of Jamaican letters, was a true artist who lived his life from the inside out, saw the world and the lives of others from the outside in. No dimension was tod spacious for him to sample, no ex perience too frightening. He had developed the peevish intelIect'Ual irritability of genius, the impatience of the honest, the forthrightness of the able. He spoke straight from the shoulder, hard ugly words sometimes, found joy in the thunder and conflict of argument, used words sometimes as rapiers, sometimes as stiIIetos, sometimes as pickaxes or mauls, always aggressively in the lists of dialectic. He drank and played hard, chose his friends from among those who held no superior. ity for the act of living. He was incapable of any snobbery but the snobbery of the intimate group, he sought out no artists or writers, and scorned the literati. In fact, he was ordered to leave more than one meeting of austere, dignified in tellectuals gathered together to self-consciously discuss Writing or Art. Roger on "The Intellectual" was a classic of its kind. 136
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4. When he finished the first draft of "Tbe Hills-Were Joyful Together". he was afraid of it. He was afraid of the months of work. the hard struggle with words. the deep love be bad for hi s own creation He was afraid it might not be good enough. He gave it to a few friends to read a very few It was a powerful blunt-edged work, shockingly direct, full of Roger a n d his language. It was rough in the first draf, t rough and unfinished its characters blurred sometimes. But it was a work -that t hrobbed wirth power, that promised to emerge with dedicated effort. He took it back into the miN of his mind pounded it finer. worked it around. Then he proudly prese nted it again It was his first book. ready to go to the printers. The re was no questiQn in his mi nd now about i t being good enough. He knew. It proved out that be was right. except for some sligbt adjustment. Roger had never left Jamaica. He was incurious about the world, about the miles of water and strange la nds that were over the four horizons. He had been searching out the heart of his own land, a patriot, a nationalist, a J amlai can whose home was Olympus But suddenly he decided be wanted to see the places outside. He told his fri e nds he would b e leaving Jamaica by hook or crook. He set about painting with an angry fury hurrying to capture the world he saw and the people he saw His work w ent on sbow at Anderson Hous e, paintings again of bills and houses, of faces and forms. The show was attended b y friends. by critics by the curious It was his first major show, although he had put on a one-man show previously at Doris Duperly's Phoenix Library Ag ain his talent, surprisingly extensive to many wh o came shown in his understanding of form and colour, of shape and substance, of the nature of the things he saw, was the outstandin g characteristic of the show. More now, found the word "genius" and the phrase, "the genius of Roger" more apt. more easy to use The Seeker still sought and Roger was se arching through the world of canvas and paint for another part of him se lf. He worked at poems, was inspired by the hurricane of 1951, t o write the prize-winning "this is the city this is the hills ... ", a story of the wild fury of the streets ill' th e mid st of a disaster. He lived his life of intellectual se arch, leaving bebind the vital statistics of his own life. "Born. Kin g ston, Augnst 11, 1905 son of E ustace Cleveland Mais, business man, and Anna Louis e Sw aby ; educated Calabar Higb Schoo]; former Civil Servaat (Education Depal1tment 1924), reporter publisher, planter, horticultural ist, photographer Publications: "Face and O ther S tories; And Most of An Man; House of Pomegranate. Plays: "Masks and Paper Hat; Hurrica ne; IViorning Noon ; and Night; Atalanta 3:t Calydon; George William Gord on; Painting; Two One-Man shows. 1949 1951; Unmanied; recreations: Reading literature, painting ............ arguing .......... fighting ............ drinking ............ living." And so Roge r lef.t for England, bid ad ie u to the few select friends he had allowed within the orbit of his searching friendship, with whom he shared his moments of madness, of anger and blind wrath, of profane lust for life. He 137
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left with a publisher's acceptance in his pocket, with a wider fame within his grasp. But not before he had put on a final powerful one-man show in the house of his sister, Jessie softspoken, understanding Jessie, a show to which he invited friends, presented his mother. fus sed and worried and finally left. Again those who came and saw were amazed at the flexibility of his understanding, and those who could understand and see recognised in his work something as dis tinctive as a bold signature for Roger's work, still reaching and seeking, had become Roger, .identifiably his. He wrote to a few friends from abroad. England! was dirty, the most de pressing, damp country, London was an untidy charwoman. He was living in small digs, getting used to the cold, dim, spacious mass of London. He was going to Paris. The word sang. It was t!be greatest of Roger's hopes to see Paris. He took his talent, his brushes, his ideas and! understanding to Paris There he worked, painted the places around him worked with a sudden hurry and rush, with a d esperate haste. The 50-year-old boy still looked at life through his ever-youthful brown eyes, put down what he saw. As he painted, he wrote, and revis e d words written before, new words projected from the fevered mael strom of impressions that filled his mind. He cryst allisel and shaped a character who had walked through "The Hills Were Joyful Together," his first, contro versial novel into the gentle humanity of "Brother Man". The jackets of both novels were illustrated by Roger himself, brought his characters to life to be seen by the reader When he returned to Jamaica in December 1954, he spent lonely, quiet days in his mother's Barbican home. A few friends visited him, were frightened at what they saw were impressed by his flerced determination to finish the many things that were yet to be done. B : ut the fight was a losing one. While he was sick in bed his paintings went on display, the show arranged, planned, put on by his good frien d and confidant, Albert Huie. From the waIls of .the Institute glowed a n e w Roger, newly crystallised ability a bdght talent, a deft, profes sional understanding of how to put down things around him. D oc tors had opened Roger, despaired. The little, bearded man returned to the home of his sister. He began his halting walk toward s the final door. Be yond it ..... ? Golden are the fruit of night, Golden for laughter . Ro ger had written those w o rds of the endIess reaohes of space. Who planned the orchard there, Planned their hereafter. Golden are the fruit of night, Golden for laughter And the Searcher walked through the door, alone. 138
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J ON WRITING mSTORY -AN ADMINISTRATIVE VIEW by ALLAN YOUNG The sector of history-writing with which I am most concerned is the sector in which I myself have recently been operating I shall therefore begin with a few observations on my own approaches to "The Approaches to Local Self-Government in British Guiana." (1) To begin with, how is itt that the book came to be written? The answer to this liies in a single ward encouragement. I was persuaded by a number .of knowledgeable persons into believing that the material utilised for my B. Litt thesis has some historical value that is practical and not wholly academic. With encouragement I embarked on the add i tional work" of revamping, of ampli fying and simplifying of whittling down and amending the original thesis, to bring the book into its uItimrute form, but it is a fact. as I have menti o ned in the preface to the book, that the work was conceived primarily as an administrative and not as a historical study. This is a point to which I will be returning. The question may well be asked, why is it that an ex land surveyor/civil servanJt, currently concerned with communications and works, shouid aspire to producing a work on the subject of local government what are the factors that influenced the choice nf subject? The answer this time is not so simple ; The foremost reason, I think. is the fact that my Civil Service apprentice ship was served with the Local Government Board. This was my baptism in the practicalities of viHage administration from the inside. Sever aI years later, as Chairman of a vil1age counciI and later stiJ1 as a District Commissioner, I was to come to grips with the realities from the outside My early duties demanded direct intercourse with the village and village overseers Among these duties, I was assigned the responsibility for the priIllting of all viIllage estimates. From these I gained a direct and useful insight into the entire scope of the activities of the many village councils and country authorities Every Friday a swarm of village overseers wou;ld descend upon the office with their pay-lists for the week's village works. As issistant pay-master. it was my duty to see that the work was within the approved estimate, to cheCk the arithmetical accuracy and to verify that every one of these pay-sh-eets was Certified by the village chairman and at least one councillor, or not less than two councillors. I then had to examine the appropriate ledger, to see whether each village was 'in funds' from its rate colieotions. to the extent of the sum reqUired, before writing a cheque for issue to the overseer to cover the amount. In course of pUblication by Longmans Green & Co., Ltd., in association with the -Extra Muml Department. U&C.W.I . and scheduled for release in June, 1955 .-Ed.
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I later had to check the correctness of the stamp duties where these were required, and such other details as the correspondence of the signature at the receiving end with the name of the worker furnished. It w.as at this period that an event o ccuned that created in my mind a ".lasting interest in village affairs. This event was my first reading of the tpemo randum on village aqmini s tration in British Guiana prepared in 1903 by Mr. A. M. Ashmore, the tlien Colonial Secretary. The memorandum itself is brief for such a document compared with many of the official memoranda I have since seen and it was quite unpretenti o us to Jook at, but the tale it told of bands of ex-slaves combining to purchase abandoned plantll!tions, out of which they moUlded 5.0 many of tht' villages for which I was processing the pay-sheets, caught and held my imagination. My next stimulus in this direction was to come in 1937 with the publica tion of Clementi's "Constitutional History of British Guiana". Though a cott stitutional work, Clementi quite gratuitou s ly threw in two chapters on local government Chapter IV of Part II on The Municipality of Georgetown and Ohapter XV on Vil'hll ge Administra1ion and Local Government. Clementi's two hundred thousand words on the history of the Colony's constitution made it :quite unnecessary for me to adopt his pattern in reverse and devote a chaptet' to constitwtional history in my short history of village admin1stration. Thanks to Clementi, I could confine myself to the occasional reference needed to make some point, and to resuming the constitutional record where Clementi left off, but again merely for the purpose of argument. Clementi's chapter on village administration shed much more light on village history than did Ashmore's memorandum. Even so however, it is under standably a bald outline and what set my mind racing was not so much what Clementi said as what he left unsaid I found myself asking myself a number of questions. I was curious to know a great deal more as to how the successive systems of village administration actuaJ.Jy worked while they lasted, exactly what it was they has each tried to accomplish and the precise reasons why. and the way in which, they each had failed. A decisive moment came in 1951 when, like more than a score of other Guianese civil servants over a number of years, an opportunity came my way to do some intensive work in administration, including research in some particu lar aspect. For the research, my natural choice was village administration in British Guiana, .but I must confess that I had a moment of weakness. This came when I read for the first time Burn's "Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British West Indies ." The plight of the p e or Stipendiary Mag istrate, pressured between Parliament and Planter striving heroically nevertheless to do the right thing as he saw it, awakened my interest. The Apprenticeship came of course a century before the phrase "continental destiny" had been popularised by Sir Gordon Lethem. Burn clearly intended this book to cover British Guiana, and like a good Guianese I was incensed to find that it was confined almost entirely to the Jamaican scene. that in a book of 400 pages the references to British Gui aria number oruy eight, an adding up to a total of"less than three pages. The ................ t4Q
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urge to make a similar study for British Guiana was strong. But I soon reflected that our Stipendiary Magistrates had sur v ived for more t han a century beyond the end of apprenticeship and that in the meantime the a pprentices themse lves had graduated into full-fledged villagers. T he post-apprenticeship relationship between stipendiary Magistrate and ex-apprentice was whally unexplared. This was clearly tied in with village development. Everything painted to the need far a history af village administratian I was nat long in discavering tao that the curiaus pattern af supersessive :legislationoutlined by Clementi was characteristic not only of ,,' pure village admin i stra t ian. It was evi dent in several other allied sphere s What was behind it all? Ther e was a nly ane way of finding out. I wa s back where I had started. F o r me hist o rical rese a rch into villa g e administration in British Guiana was quite inescapable. So much then for the existence of the boak and the cbaice of subject. One of the most exciting features of histarical writing on British Guiana is the stru g gle for material. Ge n erally spyaking the problem is not So' much a dearth of material as the difficulty of lacating what there is, the maddening uncertainty as to exactly where s ome link of vital informatian might be hiding itself the question may be at times, on which side of the Atlantic? For the general histarian some authentic wark is naw earning to hand, Clementi on Chinese Immigratian and again on the Constitutian, Nauth on the East Indians Raymond Smith an Negro Sacial Evaluti o n and my own wark On the Villages. A histary of sugar has been published in several valumes. In my own chasen field I was far less fartunate. Clementi's two chapters, a chapter in the Repart to the Fabian Colonial Bureau on Lacal Oovernment in the Colonies, s cattered reference s in Praf e ssor Simey's "Welfare and Planning in the West Indies", two articles in Timehri and the published literature on my subject was exhausted Dr. MarshaH's repart was not available until I had reached the concluding stages.. I was thrown back on the primary sources of material, always the mast reliable in the end Successive le g islatian again s t the backgraund of the Caurt of Policy and Combined Caurt debates, and carrespandence between the Gavernor and the Colonial Office proved the most fruitful and dependable saurce, and one hitherto virtually unexplared, and, so lang as I was in the United Kingdom a source that was readily available thraugh the Public Recard Office and the Colonial Office Library. For thase wh o may be interested p e rhaps I might men, tion that in the latter library there appears to be a gap af sev eral volumes in the Court of Policy Debates. I was to discover too that in British Guiana the complete hansard was in. traduced only from 1880. Prior to this only minutes of th e proceedings were kept. Fortunately hawever, it was the practice to repraduce the debates verbatim in the daily newspapers of the time of which a good supply is to be found in the Archives, Georgetown
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, I said earlier on that ''The Approaches ... "was conceived primarily as an administrative and not as a historical study. Perhaps I should now remove any possible misimplication by glancing briefly at the respective roles of history and administration What is history? It is. in my views. the progressive total record of the efforts of mankind in its upward striving towards the fuller life The raw material of history is human behaviour and human achievement. Human failure will also find a place. and the record will include such milestones as migrations and conquests. treaties and laws, discoveries and disasters. Eacb achievement. every failure, every effort in short. is born of a prior decision. We must add to the record too the triumphs over the challenge of natUTal disaster. the challenge of flood and famine, earthquake and pestilence. but where disaster is it must be noted that a natural occurrence, how ever cataclysmic. is never in itself history but only the germ of history, only a scientific fact in the physical evolutIon of the inanimate region. A volcanicerup tion in the Gobi desert or the Antarctic wastes i s a matter not for the historian. but for the scientist. "The event itself is as pure water from the pitcher of Fate" What makes history is not disaster itself but the effect of disaster on human beings. What makes history out of an Act of God is the action taken by man to meet and deal with its effects. Here again action must be prefaced by decision in every case. Achievement, failure, the coping with disaster, these are born alike of decision The history of a people is therefore to be in its national decisions. and what is public administration concerned with but the making of national decisions? This between history and administration is not always appar ent. for in the making of these decisions there must be in each case some head of State vested with the ultimate responsibility and in the pageant of world histo ry the untrained eye sees little evidence of public administration, but only. at the summit of the nation. a varied procession of High Priest and President Dictator, King Emperor and Cabinet Minister, a procession in which the Colonial Governor very nearly finds a place, mutatis mutandis. To these leaders are pass ingly entrusted this ultimate responsibility, irrespective of the number of in dividuals who might each make a contribution towards the decision made on behalf of the nation. This then, in essence, is the administrative view of history the record of the successive national decisions of a people. in its upward striving on every towards the attainment of the fuller life 142,
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. BIOGRAPIDCAL NOTES JOY ALLSOllP (now Joy Bland). A writer of children s stories, Teddy the Touam, eros.. sing the Water and Wood-Skin. Was co-editor of Kykoveral No. 21. E. K BRATHWAITE Poet, Historian and Professor of Social and Cultural History . V.W. I. One of best known poets of the West Indies. E. R. BURROWES took art to the Guyanese people in 1954 with his Working People's Art Class. This was the foundation of the art structure in Guyana today GEORGE CAMPBELL Jamaican poet and playwright published First Poems in 1945 and was one of the more important poets in Focus. OWEN CAMPBELL was one of the three outstanding poets of St. Vincent. IAN CAREW Guyanese poet and novelist, has been an editor, an actor a University lecturer and written radio and television plays. MARTIN CARTER An internationally famous poet who was Minister of Information and Culture in the Guyana Govt. AIME CESAIRE Mayor of Fort-de France, delegate to the Fr. Parliament and ProfessOr of Literature is an outstanding poet and playwright from Martinique FRANK COLL YMORE Barbadian poet, editor and teacher he edited DIM for decades and published poems and short stories. p, R DALY Issued between 1940 and 1955 the Stories of the Heroes an analysisot persons important in Guyanese history VERB T DALY Teacher and headmaster, published A Short History of the Guyanese People, The Making of Guyana (for children). GEORGES DESPORTES Fellow poet with Cesawe and outstanding man' of letters LILIAN DEWAR One of the outstanding woman scholars of Guyana, who became the first Guyanese headmistress of Bishops High School. CELESTE DOLPHIN Editor of Kaie the offieial organ of the Dept. of Culture, and autbor of Children of Guiana. A pioneer in Broadcasts to Schools, and she has written short stories in a tradition of mocking ridicule. OSWALD DURAND Author of Haiti' s most celebrated folk poem, here translated by W Adolphe Roberts. WILSON HARRIS Poet and novelist and one of the most original of Caribbean writers, was a land surveyor in Guyana for many years. ROY REA TH Poet and novelist, lawyer and a teacher of French in London schools, uses heavily moderated dialect to analyse folklore themes in G / town. CECIL HERBERT Trinidadian Land Surve yor who served in the R.A.F. in Canada in 1944 has published poems. ELLSWORTH MeG. KEANE Secondary school teacher, critic and musician who has performed in London and Cologne as leader of an orchestra MIRIAM KOSHLAND An American poet translator She has translated poems from outstanding French writers and has edited an anthology of this type : GEORGE LAMMING Novelist poet and critic Born in Barbados, he is one of the best .: known West Indian novelists WALTER MacA. LAWRENCE Guy anese poet and journalist who for ten y ears from 1929 to 1939 produced poems with a strong V ic torian and Words w orthian influence. LEO (EGBERT MARTIN) Guyanese crippled poet who had his Poetical Works published in London in 1883, and won an Empire Wide Competition Prize for the best two additional verses to the British National Anthem in 1888 ETIENNE LERO Martinique-born poet and short storY writer ; who founded a cultural movement in Paris for the descendan t s of Negro-Mrican slaves 143
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ROGER MAIS J a maican a nd 'short Writer, and painter, who depicted force fu ll y crude violent and yet i ntro s pective life of the King stop. , .. WORDSWORm McANDREW An important Guy a n es e writer with -' poems of' thoughtful of folk t a le s, .. HIiDA M cDONALD as' Informat i on in Antigua during the 1939 -1945 war In 191 5 was member of a Lond o n Literary Club along with Galsworthy and B e rnard Sh a w : IAN McDONALD Trinidad-born novelist, poet and editor, Fellow of the Royal' SocietY 6f Literature, Capt a ined Cambridge Uiliversiiy and then Gu yana and W I, at tennis, BASIL McFARLANE (Jamakanborn ) S o n of J E Clare McFarlane, served with t h e in the Sec ond Wo r ld W a r and has published many poems, EDNA MANLEY Wife o f one J a m a ican Prime Mini ster and mother of another, she was fourider : editot of Focus and i s a s culptor and painter of international renown EDWINA MELVILLE Gu y ane s e journali st, she has publi s hed unusual love poems from ," the Rupununi . EDGAR MITI'ELHOLZER A m a jor Gu ya nese novelist, he portrayed in his books the iinport a nce of strength an d di scip line and reached out tow ards mystical states of m ind, leaving a n unforgettabl e galle ry of char a cters, ER1C M RDACH Tobago -born poet, playwright a nd journalist, his poetry displayed all acute awareness of W.I identity WALTER ADOLPHE ROBERTS Poet nov e list hi s torian, journalist. Born in Jamaica, h e w a s a war correspondent an d ed i to r o f several U S. magazine s SHEIK SADEEK Guy anese novelist and playwright, published his books from his own printing press LEOPOLD SEDAR-SENGHOR Poet and politician h e w as for m a n y years of Sene g al : He studied a t the Sorbonne was' a professor of Negro-African and sociology in Paris and member of the French Parliament. A J SEYMOU R Roe t, wa s o f Kykoveral in 1945, and editor of the MiniatUre Poets &irie s He has been deepl y involved in the literary and cultural life of Guy ana an d the West Indies. Sir" PHILIP MAN_DERSON SHERLOCK Jamaican born poet, short story writer historian an d educ at or, he was Dir ec tor of Extr a Mural 'Dept. llf the University of the W .1. M G Po e t anthropolo g i st. Born i n Jam aica, he has been profes sor at several an d is curr e ntl y pro fe s sor at Yale HAROLD MILTON TELEMAQUE Trinid a d-born. Headmaster of a secondary school a nd forme r Pre s ident of t he Trinid a d and Toba go Lea g ue of Literary and Cultural -',. Club s. He p ubli-shed two coll e ctions, Bumt B us h and Scarlet. HILTON A VA UGHAN Barb a dian-born poet and historian. He was a parliamentarian Judge a n a Attorney Gene ra l and Barb a dos Amb ass ador to the U.N. He published Sandy Lan e and Other Poems. DEREK 'A. WALCOTT Poet and pl a ywright he has won man y international disfuictiOn s .. I oJ and prize s, an d i s one of the import ant poets : :" "t;' -< D ANIEL" WILLIAMS Born in St Vincent where he practised as a lawyer, he wa s one o e -, the well-known St. Vincent trio with Keane and Owen Campbell. DENISWILLIAMS Guyanese-born painter, novelist art' historian and anthropologist. He i s currently Director of the Walter Roth Museum and, Editor of the journal Archaeology and Anthropology. MILTON WILLIAMS Guyanese-born poet, who has writtezr poems on the theme of, Afro_, Indian harmony
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DENIS A. WESTMAAS Guyanese journalist who covered the entire range of Guyanese culture in his penetrating criticism. FRED WILMOT Jamaican-born friend and colleague of Roger Mais. ALLAN YOUNG Guyanese civil servant who used his Dev<.mshire Fellowship to research local govt. in Guyana and gained a B. Lit. degree from Oxford for his book, Approaches to Local Self Govt. in Dr. Guiana. KYKOVERAL The cost of printing and distributing a literary magazine is very heavy. Please help us to keep Kyk..over-al going by sending your annual subscriptions (two issues June and December) to either of the Joint Editors as follows: A. J. Seymour 23 North Road, Bourda Georgetown, Guyana. OR Ian Me Donald c/o Guysuco 22, Church Street, Georgetown, Tel. No. 63170 Guyana. Tel. No. 67329 In England please apply to : F. H. Thomasson. Harrow Farmhouse, Deeping St. Nicholas, Lincolnshire PEl 1 3ET. Tel. No. (0775 88) 404 Annual subscription rates: 0$40 (including postage), EC$32 (including postage), (including postage). The Editors of Kyk-over-al would welcome the submission of poems. short stories, articles and reviews to consider for publication. Publication of course cannot be guaranteed and because of expense it will not be possible to return manuscripts.
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TIlE GOLDEN KYJ{OVERAL This double-number Golden Kyk contains selections from all twenty. eight issues of the magazine from 1945 to H)61 and is both a presentation from Creative Guyana for The 1986 Year of FI[)Cus on the Caribbean, and an anthology intended to entertain and edify new readers everywhere Printed by Autoprint Ltd. Georgetown. Guyana
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