arrival 
this is the place
mark its name
the streets you must learn to remember
there are special songs here
they do not sing of you
in them you do not exist
but to exist you must learn to love them
you must believe them when they say
there are no sacrificial lambs here
the houses are warm
there’s bread there’s wine
bless yourself
you have arrived
listen
keys rattle
locks click
doors slam
silence
roomer
here I cower
from the day’s
drain and glare
a shadow
a wrinkled skin
cover me gently
night’s linen
prepare me
prepare me
separate ways
stranger in the sunset
I long to know you
To touch the poem of your presence
To dispel this loneliness
But the sun darkens
And we go our separate ways
Arnold Itwaru
These selected poems by Guyanese writer and academic Arnold Itwaru make statements about contemporary Guyanese literature and about Itwaru’s contribution to it.
They appear in the anthology Concert of Voices edited by Guyanese literary critic and academic Victor Ramraj in a collection that he further subtitled “An Anthology of World Writing in English”. We have noticed this publication before, referencing the way the anthologist draws together in one volume a sample of world literature that shows something of various national literatures. The selections make statements about literatures in English, although, with no surprise, it is predominantly of the Commonwealth and North America.
In the case of Itwaru, it is Guyanese poetry. Dr Arnold Harrichand Itwaru was born in British Guiana and moved to Canada in 1969. He studied at York University and became the Programme Director for Caribbean Studies at the University of Toronto. Apart from non-fiction writing about the Canadian experience, he has published collections of poetry, which include Entombed Survivals (1987) and Body Rights: Beyond the Darkening (Tsar Press, 1991). The outlook in the poems of the latter is very much what is reflected in “arrival”, “roomer” and “separate ways” reproduced above.
