A poem honouring ancestors

May 05, 2023 Letters

Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – My Ancestors

Fields of green swayed and danced in the lively breeze.

But a river of tears they held, and the blood and sweat of my ancestors

who toiled from dawn to the vanished charms of twilight—

a thing bitter-sweet to be born.

They endured the ocean’s wrath on the Hesperus and the Whitby.

Lured by the arkatis; they crossed the kala pani

that drenched their bodies but not their memories

of Bihar, Chennai, and the Bhojpuri speaking districts of Uttar Pradesh.

They lived in the logies;

they knew no wooden floor or carpets, but the scent of the damp Earth.

There was no faucet to open or close,

but a lone standpipe for the neighbourhood,

and a brotherhood and sisterhood we now little know.

They washed their clothes in the trenches;

there was no Colgate and toothbrush but black sage,

and no fashion or style but simple cottonwear and a smile.

With the beats of the dolak and the tassa, and festive colors, music and dance of Holi,

they forged a forgetfulness of the oppressor’s heart and hands.

It was enough for them to know the Earth and the sun-drenched grass,

but they dreamt of their children plucking the stars.

They trembled from virulent knocks of wretched visitors:

dreaded cholera, dysentery, and dengue fever.

And when they ventured from their flooded cramped quarters,

they gazed in awe at the white mansions of the taskmasters:

a world apart that bitter-sweet sugar had wrought.

Sincerely,
Haimnauth Cecil Ramkirath

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and festive colors, Bihar, Chennai, dolak and the tassa, Fields of green swayed and danced in the lively breeze.

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