Over Guiana, Clouds 
3
Kykoveral.
Strange name for stones, a heap of stones
But a strong name to take imagination
And tie it to a peak in Time
Above lost plains drowned by the later names.
The English names which still come creeping in
On the slow gathering of the years.
And the strong name winds up the centuries
And builds again the fort to hold the sentry
Standing upon his picket in the night
Thinking of Holland and of home,
While the full everlasting winds stretch out,
Straight as a board and still without a flutter,
The Dutch pavilion overhead.
Then the winds howled and gathering strength they whistled
And hurled their music through the clump of trees
Which bowed and swung their torn and weeping leaves
Till the young sentry shivered at his post ——-
This country, with its clouds like new washed fleeces
Capering gaily on the blue map of the heavens,
And then so suddenly the heavens would fall
And bowels of rain let loose would swamp the earth.
Just three months more and then the ship comes in
To bear him home again to the low dykes
The trim, familiar chequerboard of Holland. […]
6
The races fade into a brown-stained people
And the Guiana Spirit arises, stretching
As a young giant begins to open his eyes.
And sees his country with its waiting promise
Fair and unraped, and lifts his head to the heavens.
Over Guiana, clouds.
11
[…] High symbols, that behind the brown of history
Dim objects brood and huge hands shape events
From here, a little actuated dust
And there, the blind collisions of the stars.
Over Guiana, clouds.
AJ Seymour
Arthur James Seymour, better known as AJ Seymour, was born in January. This selection, “Over Guiana, Clouds” is one of the important Guyanese poems of the twentieth century because of its place in the emergence of modern Guyanese pre-independence verse. It can help to illustrate his significant role in the shaping of Guyanese and West Indian literature.
