Images in those days sun filled a world not flat
with sugar and rice and so all spiced
with evolutionary contours; trees and flutes, songs and heavens confirmed.
Millennium news head line how earth winds move: the dust of skin
from blast dried bones; breath tags blown across oceans; toll take not
now trending:
[2006]
From mass graves coffin hands rescue souls for village burial Scent of pure faith ripening still under the rubble The bridge our sons remaining will rebuild So many shell clusters memory triggers claw fingers
Taxi driver delivers counting beads for cardio monitors Our neighbours night wrenched morning sickness You were so peace loving,Majd
– W.W.
A SCRAP OF PAPER,
the torn tongue of yesterday’s hurry
a memo. about this tomorrow here,
with no thought for the stump of ruthlessness
now scowling at me like a totem.
But a change was coming. Changes were on the way for John Wayne Cotter H.S. Change had already begun with her good news. Dr. Haliburton wasn't going to let Anemona Snow spoil her day with a file and this "whole village" thing.
≈ ≈
Investigation Page 1a Written Statement Form John Wayne Cotter H.S.
Name Of Witness: Shanikqua Ledbetter
Location Of Incident: Homeroom
Student's Name: Milagros de los Angeles Cohuate
Description Of Incident:
The homeroom teacher moved Milagros behind Marvin, and Marvin said no, no. The Marvin pulled his pennis out. Then he walked around and was telling people what happened. The he came around and put his pennis in her face. After that he put it back, he pulled her hair and said, "I want to fuck you."
Shanikqua Ledbetter (Author's Signature)
≈ ≈
Investigation Page 1a Written statement Form John Wayne Cotter H.S.
Name Of Witness:
Location Of Incident: 115H
Student's Name: Milagros de los Angeles Cohuate
Description Of Incident:
This teacher ask me to sit behind Marvin and Marvin was like he aint want me to sit behind him so I was like I aint want to sit behind you either, and he grab my hair, and he was like how he want me to suck his dick and I said hell no niger and he told me he's gonna whip out his dick and I covered my face and I don't know when he went around the back and I heard someone talking behind me and when I turned around Marvin was there and he stained me with his dick and I felt stupid cause everyone was laughing and teasing me and Marvin was like it's big! I said shut up – and that was when the bell rung.
Milagros de los Angeles Cohuate (Author's Signature)
Mrs. Haliburton's racing heart felt driven. Anemona Snow was at her ears cracking a whip; meaning to get her all upset over…this unsavory business…horse manure, as her husband would say. But not to worry. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh.
Superfluous people! Come next September, they'll all be gone. In the meantime, there was this… mess…that required attention and paperwork.
Maybe she should send the whole file untouched right back to Guidance. This was a matter for the Dean of Discipline. Let Snow and company direct the file to Guidance. She had a nerve sending it here in the first place. But that was Guidance for you. They were supposed to be guiding, but it was more like the blind leading the blind down there on the first floor.
The audacity of Anemona Snow…letting her goats roam free in every- body's garden…chomping and wandering and leaving goat droppings everywhere. Which was exactly what this was all about… goat droppings …in her flower beds, on her spring dew; spoiling her good news, "Dr. Viola Haliburton". Not this time… hair sprayed old Snow crone,not in my garden!
She reached for the phone. She had to get in touch with Darlene. She had to tell her the good news. She couldn't let anyone in this building ruin her day.
The phone rang and rang. Where on earth was that good woman? A feeling of plain happiness spread through her.
The wall posters in her office would go with her wherever she located next. She'd need new leather chairs… though staying here in this room with the street view would not be all that bad. The street view… after all these years fighting off the dogs of envy, could she give up the street view?
No, success required change. It was time to front step up, move on.
On the sidewalk at that moment, looking flustered and hurried – and late again! – there was Miss Wiener. From Special Ed. Dressed in beige with some sort of maroon scarf tossed round her neck. Not exactly spring colors. Our Jewish American princess. If she'd just straighten those shoulders and put a little…funk… in that body, her prince might one day come. Time was running out on her, too. In more ways than one.
The phone was still ringing. Pick up. Pick up the phone Darlene. Got to talk to you. Darleeeene, pick up!
(from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel, by N.D. Williams, 2001)
Outside chance. Night before you register prepare with pasta party number tag the thigh stretch marks and faith check readings
while for cross-legged divining heads convene the race has started: Sunday thousands herd chase thousands asphalt pounding zone cheering phone
snaps city quarters exits closed and dark faces half nude marriages waving from fifth floor boredom cross the bridge sweat
the fiber winding rush down the park and water bottle stands a cardboard Go Vincenzo! sign along the line police watch beaks twitch glance quick
scan stragglers bearded; the clock astronomical hand counting breath takes right down to micro seconds reels you like body news fierce fast coming in
Finally
two stewards beaming, perked up for disclosure, time stamp your arms wide Welcome.
I've heard nothing beats the credits scroll: break the tape silence demons after you ̶ head light years up flights of stairs ̶ the rest way beyond what was humanly possible
from nothing random stars chute open the splash olive crown one winners all.
– W.W.
TO THE EARTH OF INEVITABLE ASCENSION
I, your partial son, praise the whole of you as I have praised some brother tree or man, and hosts of sister grass-ears or bird-tongues, and our one seed, your spouse, our father the Sun.
Now I admit and honour at last your rich graveyard of compost and manure of birth, and so encourage your slow pilgrimage whose Mecca and Jerusalem will be
not only your own end of starhood but also the willingness of men to allow in themselves the seeds of stars, seeds that will sprout and pulse in harmony with Light's breath.
So now I plant such rhyming seed in you and sense the receptive ripples of your womb, and trust such innocent incest shall prove new husbandry of all our shining fate.
Yep, spring was here, and not a day too soon; and just in time for Mrs. Haliburton to celebrate her good fortune, the fruits of hard labour over many years. She was now Dr. Haliburton. A university in Florida had granted her a doctorate.
People were sure to ask, how long has this been going on? why had she kept it close to her bosom? a university in Florida?
For the moment her star was rising. Flowers were in bloom, leaves were returning to the trees. She was ready to enjoy the days ahead when the city of New York would learn of her accomplishment, and would view her quite differently. As well they should.
She'd have to break the good news to the John Wayne Cotter family. She didn't think they'd be in the mood for this kind of good news but, hey, that was their problem.
Timing was of the essence. An announcement at the next faculty meeting would spare her the arduous task of informing individual staff members. Let the principal break the news! Let her wave a hand in her direction, make every head turn, everybody applauding. Even those who hated her would feel compelled, would feel swept up, to put their hands together and acknowledge her achievement. Timing was so important.
In fact, timing was on her mind right at that moment. She'd received a memo from Anemona Snow in the Guidance office. There had been an incident. A serious incident. Please see file enclosed. This calls for "the whole village" approach.
The more she thought about it, she was convinced Snow had slipped the "whole village" comment in there as a snide reference to the inspirational poster on the wall outside her office. She'd overheard one of her Guidance cronies snickering, as they came off the elevator, and saying (seconds before they saw her): These are her people. This is her village. Let her handle it. It didn't need a rocket scientist to figure out what that was all about.
As for the incident? Unsavoury business. Puberty fears, that's what it was. Girl accuses boy of sexual harassment. More precisely, Hispanic girl accuses black boy of sexual harassment. That was what they wanted her to handle. With "the whole village approach". Knowing full well it was the kind of incident most people in the village would want to hush before it got around.
No doubt about it, this "whole village" thing was a sly… no, this was a sneaky attempt by that crinkly white bitch Anemona Snow to disrespect her. And ruin her good news day.
These old white women, heaven help us! with their hair spray and their peeling tenured bodies. Certified and paid to be "counselors" for poor black kids.
Just the other day on the first floor there was Anemona Snow speaking to a dark-skinned chubby boy, the kind of baby-faced mischief maker who liked fast food and rhyming with his boys in homeroom. She had him cornered, his back was to the wall, his head lowered; and as Mrs. Haliburton passed there was this silence ̶ she might have been waiting for the boy to digest a piece of advice she'd just dispensed. Then she heard Anemona Snow whisper fiercely, How dare you speak to me that way?
Something in that whisper, a hard fury, a deep personal resentment, made even Mrs. Haliburton wince. What had this poor boy done to deserve this… this knee to the groin, this attempt to snap his upstart will?
Mrs. Haliburton thought of turning back to spare him further humiliation. But the boy took the matter into his own hands, answering in a fierce whiny voice, thefuckyoutalkin'bout? And now he was really in trouble, speaking to her like that.
It didn't matter. This boy knew what to do; knew what to say when these old white women who couldn't stand coarse words, loud behavior, loud anything from students, crossed a line and messed with his young manhood.
Good for you, young man! Time to hold your ground. Mrs. Haliburton kept walking.
(from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
So who would stand still at the smile of a bear? Only our Amerindians, their eyes and ears our flow past conductors, through whom configuring sails once tacked. In bed rock fables river crafts they interleave the sun (who knows what the sun comes up with these days).
No bears in our rainforest, so no way to test our hammock hung devices, climb the encrypted peace on their faces, find out what we're truly made of.
Easier to test this article: a blade resets in every sheath denied its beard lush faith: slide it out slit a wind pipe blood wipe on sleeve or leaf then slip it back: dare the darkening gap prove there was even the intent to harm.
Though since forensics can expose an Eden we do not condone relations with the leaf becomes a copy carbon risk we should maybe get rid of?
Fascia weaves untie, my friends, from whip lash together. Most now watch quietly pray post card credits pay. Rust claims anchors spice wharves music chairs in the gardens.
So who needs cast iron beams when our Amerindians can build a conical thatched pavilion that screens our heritage seams? It burns to the ground? honorific men can walk on water extend a hose from a hire truck; put sonnet estimates of loss left flickering out. Come on, aging coast guards slide rule ambition moon light hem lines. It's in our bylaws of nature. What's the matter with you, anyway?
Not a day goes by without more grist for the mill. Wait, wait refresh that ̶ pixels for the pick axe, breach stain for the sniff hounds. I'm saying, you can't plant this dig this stuff back up here.
– W.W.
DECISION IN THE DESERT
To reaffirm the one vital fire in zones where no flame seems able to blaze is not a seed beyond hope of fruition
and may not be a seed at all but the tree of fire itself, the eager burning within you, all you can know of the Sun.
But to keep on searching for fire-gold within trenches you know are hollow is the dilatory feint of addicts of fear.
It turned out she'd parked on the same block on a narrow side street; close to black garbage bags piled up for the sanitation truck, and pigeons pecking at scraps of food. Not many people about. Doors and windows locked tight, though from an attic window nearby a face peered down at them.
Her car keys out, Judy Wiener stood frozen and unsure, staring at her car. "Why does it look so different?"
Radix looked at the car. He couldn't see anything odd about it, until she drew his attention to the wheels. Where the silver hubcaps should have been, there was just the rusted metal plates and the exposed lug knots. Everything else looked intact.
He threw a quick nervous glance up the road at his car. From a distance it looked untouched but he couldn't be sure.
"Well, I suppose I ought to be thankful they left the wheels. At least I can drive home," Judy Wiener sighed.
She didn't want to be angry at the Bronx, not at that moment. Lost hubcaps were a small price to pay for trying to see Xavier. And in any event she felt certain once he was well again, once he'd found out what had happened to her car, one way or another he'd get her new set of hubcaps, no problem.
Still, a wariness crept over her face, knitting her brow. A white woman had casually parked her car on a Bronx street; and now this!
Radix shook his head, sharing her irritation that this sort of thing happened. Two blocks away, the main street was active: people streaming on sidewalks, the subway stop, commerce and buses. He could sense her distaste for this narrow street, with its dark hints anything could happen once your back was turned.
The face at the attic window across the street looked down at them.
"You sure you know your way out?" Radix asked. "The expressway is back that way?"
She managed a game smile. "I'll probably take a left at the end of the block…and go back that way."
"Well, I'd better get going. See if the wheels are still on my car. Talk to you later."
That night minutes after ten o'clock Judy Wiener called. How did she get his number? "Don't you remember, we exchanged numbers last semester…? the new Department procedure, just in case one of us wasn't coming in?" He didn't remember. "It's just that I've never used yours before."
In any event, she was calling because when she got home she'd discovered her licence plates had been stolen. Stolen? "Well, removed, along with the hubcaps." She paused. He waited, wondering, Why couldn't this news wait until they saw each other the following day? "I mean, why would anyone want to steal my license plates?" she went on. "They took the back plate, they left the front plate; or maybe they'd planned to take that one too, I don't understand. What could anyone do with just one licence plate?"
What she wanted at that hour, it seemed, was someone in the Bronx to understand what had happened to her; someone who could explain why these things happened. There was too, Radix thought, just a hint of accusation in her voice. It sounded far off, solitary, as if she was standing in an empty room.
"It doesn't make sense," he'd say whenever she paused in her bewilderment.
The whole day was already unreal, as if the hands of the clock had played with time, speeding things up, slowing things down. Soon he'd go to bed.
Maybe the following day things would be rearranged; the licence plate found, the neighbourhood thief arrested; and ̶ who knows? ̶ he might have better luck, or no luck at all when he stepped outside, for that was how time passed him in the Bronx these days.
(from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
"My heart heaves, herds-long…" – Gerard Manley Hopkins, "No Worse, There is None"
Same old El Dorado hook, find oil generators same caciqui Raleigh premise, land and lords of gold. The dray cart bony death trot. Shades of grass that fail to warn as one eyed reptiles uncoil time to mate.
No morning prayers, out of nowhere Crow & Co. in day clean amber hold.
Just the dowry bed rule wish to have you ̶ brace display stare out at starry starry nights, the moon in hand grip earth lock; vows breeding in. Your navel ring lustre up for this, peasant bride?
First secretaries lean to pitch the heed, proof cleavage read, as blade strips cane leaves pity pleats on window dress; on forest feathers city crown dust sin positioning; the alphabet dilapidated sites.
What horse sense could resist the feed bags in office treasure? the transfer > flight track shape shift lift to grouse nests in, click, a maple leaf fall free state? learn to curl limb eat brick cold, stuff loss you can write songs about.
The word webbed frog leap over muddles, cycles back and forth on old plantation grids; not miles, teeth grinds to go before the pedals stutter: whose net worth's caste? The fear down floating creek black water deep as Kaie falls bush in master river bending: whose heart caves beak craves darkness?
Patria! is so they roll. Hasta Siempre so we fold.
– W.W.
TO A COLONIST
You slant by and I know you as someone who is what he knows, something so certain it
has no notion of itself, no name, no voice, only mask of itself as a man with name
and words to say to other ghosts whose maskness makes you wince in despair of blind false fools.
You know too much not to be hiding all hints of yourself behind your wall of stone facts
by which you try to limit the world of the mind to your golden models of a past
a stigma in your eye bright with anger for a world stained by your own shadowed vision.
But arrogance is excused by neither experience nor ignorance nor innocence.
We either surrender pride or flag our stones to ragged fire; either grant stone is smoke
or rage till smoke it proves us when easy all its walls fall as hard as we believe them.
Xavier's mother appeared to be studying Radix for the first time ̶ looking him up and down, immensely curious about his association with this white woman.
Radix shifted from one foot to the next. "So when will they let us see Xavier?" he asked. This was enough to snap him back into the conversation. Judy Wiener explained, seemingly just for his benefit, that Xavier's condition needed round the clock observation.
Xavier's mother looked at her watch. "O, my goodness!" she declared, still ladylike in manner; she had to catch the train to Manhattan. She worked at a bank, from 6.00pm to 2.00am ̶ "the graveyard shift", she smiled knowingly. In fact, Xavier was on his way to her bank to get her house key (he couldn't find his) when the incident with the police officer occurred.
Outside Radix was determined not to seem disinterested right at the point of taking leave. Xavier's mother was buttoning up her coat and explaining more about her son. And for the first time he heard the anguish of a mother whose child lay in a hospital bed "in critical but stable" condition.
"I have to contact the lawyer, let him know 'bout the way they have him handcuffed to the bed. Treating him like a common criminal!" This brought them to a halt on the sidewalk. Judy Wiener folded her arms and shook her head, firmly allied with Xavier's mother on this issue.
Did she have far to go, Radix asked. Did she need a lift? No, the subway stop was two blocks away; she could manage.
She reached in her bag, took out a pack of spearmint gum and offered it around. In the cold afternoon light she presented the image of an indomitable island woman, up from island poverty; getting little sleep these days, but not about to give in to self-pity and fatigue. A mother relieved of the aggravation in her marriage, living only for her son now handcuffed to a hospital bed.
And as if to reinforce the idea of how resourceful she was, she explained, speaking now for Radix' benefit, that she had tried to enroll Xavier in a high school on Long Island. They'd told her she would need a referral from a school counselor. "Like he was a delinquent or some- thing!"
Turned away, her aspirations denied, she had no choice but to send him to his zoned school, John Wayne Cotter H.S.
She spoke as if she wanted Radix to understand this, before they went their separate ways bearing half-finished portraits of each other. Whatever he thought about her, he should know this about her son ̶ Xavier was a good boy, a smart, decent boy.
"Him used to sing in the church choir." (The "him" gave her island origins away, and as she went on she seemed to drop her speech affectations.) His father was a strict man. When they came to New York he picked up the notion of raising a "straight A student". He insisted the boy's report be free of blemish. "Him get blows all 'bout him head if his father see even one stray B on the report card."
Judy Wiener nodded, though Radix couldn't tell if she'd heard the story before and was simply confirming its truth.
Xavier's father spoke too harshly and lifted his hands once too often to the boy. She couldn't stand aside and witness the "child abuse" any longer. She separated from him taking Xavier with her. It was at this point that Xavier started going down.
"Him kind of feel like freedom, you know, since his father wasn't around anymore. So him lose the discipline. Him get into some kind of trouble with the teachers so they put him in Special Education. But Mrs. Wiener here is a good teacher, so I have nothing to worry about, right Mrs. Wiener?"
It was a good moment to say goodbye, on a note of sweet optimism, after the disappointment at not seeing Xavier. And so after a farewell embrace and handshakes, Xavier's mother went off to catch her train.
"Isn't it terrible?" Judy Wiener was saying, searching her bags for her car keys as she walked beside Radix.
He wasn't sure what she meant but he agreed: life was indeed terrible. Black boys handcuffed to hospital beds, that gold-chained man lounging at the street corner with his pitbull ̶ in the Bronx life was a terrible, fragmented thing. With frothy rapids through which they all navigated; staying closer to this bank or that bank; isolated souls meeting and sharing distress, then pushing out and away again.
(from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
"Marvellous gift…always said so …wish I had it." ̶ Samuel Beckett, "Happy Days"
Back into the fold they'd smack your head if eyes so much as think of link with bouncing black as night limb intimations. Our path was set, the English pass marked our veils and hair.
Raised watching cricket we kept faith seeking fast balls out hit seamers high beyond the boundary. From safe crease to rest stop we scurried, rum happy runs in the stands.
At public school with numbers pure mind ruler we'd ground algebra in masala, fence our neighbours whole sale loss ̶ distinction incubating, indenture optimized.
Our family choice, the surgeon god play: scrub up, scruples under, invest through neat exclusions; chide swab the closed heart bleed stitch tight what's torn with in house wiring suicide cells.
Not bad for a village lad whose father knew plantation thirst and cow and hurt left unattended. You should see Pa when he visits his grand child here in Ox shire.
His cutlass gasps pride edging forehead lines; bare foot he shuffles out to lawn chairs flowers biscuits Tetley tea. Here the greening rain salves old sod turning hands. Good paddy, our Son, he smiles, viewing the dinner cutlery.
Head stones will scroll House once stilt stuck Home yard broom free These bones we grow or throw Good gracious me.
– W.W.
THE ANT
The ant's a terrible thing, being, I mean, so intent upon doing. Consider this one taking home a massive morsel of that dead fly's wing, going the same way he came, passing others coming to duplicate him, this worker wasting no time greeting his peers, giving each only a shame-
less superficial kiss before moving on. Should I crush one of his brothers, he would simply pass by and forget it. Such singlemindedness
(Mr. Tang says one straight line completes Tai, the Chinese character that signs Great) frightens me, reminding me of maniacs like businessmen going blind
straining at their proving grist. But the ant, in his moment of an utmost outside of men's best and worst, stays well beyond burdens of future and past.
Since her death in 2003 the poetry of Mahadai Das has been embraced
in some quarters with as much fervor and sadness as the poetry of
Martin Carter. Not far behind the glowing tributes are many references
to her personal life. You could develop any number of profiles from
intimate details made public about her.
Consider these for instance: “Delivered by midwife on October 22nd
1954”, with its hints at susceptibilities and risk. “The oldest of ten
children”, upon whom great expectations were hoisted, and a fate
beyond multiple childbearing sealed. Her death after illness and “open
heart surgery”, suggesting a talented child might have come into the
world already marked for death.
Other details may or may not support the notion of a foreshadowed
life: the former beauty queen (Miss Diwali, 1971) and standard bearer
of beauty for her ethnic group; the political activist, going against the
current, choosing to align her hopes not with a race-based party.
Answering instead a post-Independence call to nation building: “I Want
to be a Poetess for My People.”
In Bones (1988) you might anticipate the pea shelling of women
“issues”, a feminist rigour in the lines. There is, instead, delicate
sentiment and a wistful self-probing. “Though I have reason/ to blow
trumpets, I play/ an elegiac flute in silver hours/ of a misty morning,
calling birds with songs.” (“Resurrection”).
Bird images are everywhere in this collection; but then there’s so much
one would wish to take flight from in Guyana: the drain clog of poverty
and ethnic preference, the cast nets of unremorseful ideologues. Das
admits to being “Bird stricken./Shrunken my globe, my joys, small
circumference.” Birds like thoughts fly out of her head; sometimes
their fate is the clipped wing, or ̶ like “a pigeon anklestrung/
homefed” ̶ the trapped availability of spirit.
Das has been gathered in the folds of ethnic heroism, her past mistakes
forgiven. Her folly as an East Indian woman (in the 70s) was to cross
over into political territory controlled vindictively by black men.
Reviled quietly for this act of ethnic infidelity, she was forgiven and
welcomed back in death by the heritage keepers (and others following)
and embraced as a victim of idealism and her own “naïve faith” –
wanting to be a “poetess” inclusive of the wrong people.
What’s not so openly acknowledged is the first surge of bravery that
pushed her craft out against race-based currents; that front running,
off limits individuality that landed her eventually in the company of
black men. (There were reports – accompanied by the trashiness of
newspaper comment – of sexual assault on Das while on National
Service in the 70s).
Insular group thinking, not base impulses, was surely what worried Das
most. And the irony cannot be missed of her life running out in
Barbados, then an island of more accommodating black men.
≈ ↨ ≈
One wonders what if anything Das was “committed” to after her flight
from Guyana. There is ample record of “travel” and “study”, but in
Bones little evidence of all the harrowing or enlightening stuff she
must have lived through as she moved among men and around the
world. Poems set in North America (“Chicago Spring”) or drawn from
her reading (“For Anna Karenina”) don’t display much more than
transient insight and undemanding metaphor.
What Bones reveals, however, is the readiness of the Diwali beauty
queen to be participant in parades of national achievement. The
problem was, she found no emerging “nation” in Guyana, and no worthwhile “people” achievement.
Consequently Das wrapped herself up and shipped away. “In your
heart, I have not found a port/ but wide-open seas where I may
dream.” In low, dark moments of limbo her lines wander off from her
declared purpose into spasms of self-commiseration. “I mourn
unflowered words, / unborn children inside me.” “Like a packcamel
in desert terrain/ I will ride, the load of existence/ upon my camel’s
hump”.
If the sentiments there sound a bit lush and long-suffering for a still
young “poetess”, wallowing on the page in wet clichés, you could blame her welcome backers for ignoring her flaws, for shielding her
person and poetry from what was perceived as unwanted gossip and
character smear.
There are poems in Bones about regret, isolation, yearning and death;
but Das offers only spare reflections on these themes – “Tomorrow, I
rise/ between dead thighs of another day” – leaving an occasional
puzzle at the end for reader homework. In one long poem (“For Maria
de Borges”) Das conjures auras of vulnerability and circling doom, using
vivid if uninspired imagery: “Death rides, high black moon over all my
dreams. /Secret rider across sky’s low fields.”
The tremulousness of the estranged heart, rather than her beauty and
body beset on all sides, was the subject that really preoccupied her.
Between ages 40 to 49 life expectations, you suspect, begin to solidify.
In Das there’s a sense of so much business unfinished, of something
ambivalently poised and pained but not yet formed. The “bird” image
comes to mind again. Das seems constantly up there, lone sparrow in
bruising winds; beating against currents, but wanting some strong arm
or rock to rest on; and unable to find rest (or laurels) in religious faith
or ethnic solidarity or diasporic achievement.
For she might have considered becoming a niche poet (like Guyanese
poet Grace Nichols) writing long-memoried, winning poems about her
race and her uplifted womanhood. She could have sneaked into
academia, funneling her roots and victim experience into Ethnic or
Gender studies. There was certainly no lack of agreeable choices.
Circumstances and her illness, it seems, cut short her options.
Still, you can’t help but admire the tireless, flight test wings that
ignored fears and warnings, and kept daring the unknown. The
“nerve” of her, they must have said; the uncommon will to strive
despite the odds – “My bark of reeds/ is frail, light stems –
insufficient. The current is fierce.”
Das writes a “Sonnet To A Broom”, its function “to gain only a clean
floor of truth.”. Like the poet it toils away with no expectation of
praise or reward: “Yet unreproachful, you return to use/efficient
though abused, but willing.”
You keep hearing in her lines beats of goodness and resilience; a (pre)
disposition perhaps too openly trusting for road or sea (“Unlike
Columbus/ I am neither helmsman nor sailor”). You sense, too, an
embryonic “consensual” Guyanese identity, the birth of which seemed
precious and important to Das. It is for this reason the “arrival” of her
talent merits our patience and commemoration.
There was so much, it seems, still forming, pushing out the shell, in
her poetry; and in her life – as in the lives of “the people” she wrote
for – so many transitions incomplete. Though from all indications you’d
have to think she was getting there.
– W.W.
Book Reviewed: Bones: Mahadai Das: Peepal Tree Press, England
1988: 53 pgs. (A version of this article appeared elsewhere in 2008)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN : NEWS 