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Love in the time of El Niño

Feb 14, 2010 Features / Columnists, Guyanese Literature

– By Petamber Persaud

Love is in the air, ask Cupid. Valentine’s Day is here again reminding us to renew our commitment to our loved ones.
Love is a universal theme for writers, especially poets whom are engaged in making optimum use of the purest form of language. Pure love expressed in pure language – what a combination, what an experience, what an offering.
It may not be obviously evident but Guyanese poets have produced some awesome love poetry (and some mediocre work). The first good piece that comes readily to mind is ‘Ever Waiting’ written by Shana Yardan.

‘How can you walk into the garden of my life
And trample on the neatly laid out beds of habit?
Or pluck the buds from struggling trees
Of thoughts grown dearer than human companionship:
And plant within its centre the image of yourself?

Is it because you know
That you are all the habit I have?
That in all learning I am untaught
Save in what you shall teach me?
For, if 1 am, then what I am I know not…
Unless I be a vacuum waiting, ever waiting.

Then Love, if you must come
Tread softly thru’ the garden of my life.
Touch not, nor break the buds that fragrance lend:
But graft them with that other self of mine
Which is you.’

The second piece I want to share with you comes from the pen of another woman writer, Edwina Melville, titled, ‘In the Night’.

‘In the night, whispering tender words
Musky with suppressed emotion,
I lie in your arms and wince.
These are not the things I would hear from you
This is not my love,
This is man’s lust, speaking
I see your eyes a smouldering sombre flame
I touch your lips, soft yet, with the caress of youth
Chasing the tiny wrinkles and furrows from your brow.’

Too often men ignore the voice of our women writers at our own peril. But there is elucidation as in the words of Cleveland Hamilton, ‘I love you, Woman/because you are various’ going on to tabulate her virtues.

How do our male writers see love? A. J. Seymour had explored numerous topics in his writing but his love poems are a revelation. Seymour wrote in this vein because it is ‘one of the most important impulses of the human being…seeking to be joined with the other in aching completion’. Here is a sample.

‘Memories of you besiege my waking day
And batter on my consciousness at night,
The shape of you, the swing with which the slight
Taut figure of you turns to a deed…
There is a coiled strength in you like slim steel
Like rapiers…
But tenderness you have outstrips the rose’s…
And grace, …
Shaped in the dance from rhythms that you used
To wheel delighted limbs…’

There are numerous other examples of the love theme in Guyanese literature but this short essay makes no attempt to explore the whole gamut, the academics will, I hope, examine this universal theme in Guyanese literature in what ought to be useful dissertations.

I close with the words of J. W. Chinapen taken from ‘O Woman, What are You?

‘Pray, tell me, Woman, what you are
Who hold man in such thoughts profound!
To make your precious form more fair,
What tasks he tries in ceaseless round!

Your praise he lifts in lyric tone,
He limns your charms ineffable,
And chisels in marmoreal stone
Your lineaments symmetrical.

O Woman, what you are, I know!
Man seeks to make of you no show;
But in you he pursues his dream:
The Avatar of his quest supreme!’

Happy Valentine from Guyanese literature to you.

Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@ yahoo.com

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