There was a time when I tried not to know Mahadai Das. This was because after suffering a stroke, madness seemed to have entered her. She had the impression that I was in a position to publish her writings and make her a lot of money. So she came looking for me in my office in the sugar company on the second floor of the Guyana Stores Universal Building. I was told and cravenly fled my office. On one occasion she burst past the receptionist and came hammering on the door of my office. Security had to be summoned. It was very embarrassing, this young woman banging on the door of a Director. Hard to explain.
In an earlier time, I had met Mahadai a few times mostly with Arthur Seymour, to whom she was submitting her verse for his scrutiny. She had great promise, he said. Then she had gone abroad to study and there she had encountered tragedy. Now she had returned. Her dark eyes were intense and angry. I remember I was distressed for her but I felt I had to hide.
The main thing is that in the suffering of her tragedy, Mahadai Das became a great poet. Her later work is, after Martin Carter’s poems, the greatest body of poetry by a Guyanese. I feel my skin tingle when I read the last poems of Mahadai Das, a marvellous starburst of creativity before the darkness.
Her heart broke and her mind raged and out of this fire of despair and fierce desire emerged these passionate and enduring fragments. Here are a few of them plucked from a burning mind.
Tears
Bones of dew scatter on my plate
as they rain down the land.
how can I stop them? They splatter
through my dreams leaving me homeless.
Oh God! I am naked as a newborn.
I implore you with my tears.
Monday, Come Quickly
Come quickly, Monday.
your flag in my heart hides
from the wind of his eyes.
Deep-flung, I drink turquoise
pools of sudden water.
I am a mermaid basking on the rock
of his glance.
Woman-at-sea, I am vine-bound
upon rafters of his smile.
The razor-teeth of the hours,
swift, sure sharks, lurk
beneath my bark.
Light shards from above.
Nights of his absence
seem distant.
Switch off the Darkness
Switch off the darkness, sweet.
Direct your smiles with its rosedrawn
chariots across my dark clouds,
I need your light, young one –
not a small star, some dim moon
nightly sliced in my sky,
bet your whole golden coin
so I may freely spend it
Across love’s counter in your eyes.
I read them again with tears in my eyes. There are others, also – Learner; Ant and Eternity; Bernini Baby; The Leaf in His Ear; Lucky; The Coming Of The Maiden; In The Clear Ballroom – where you can see her damaged but radiant mind unburdening itself in a rush of immortal longing before oblivion. And the last one of them all:
Return Me to the Fire
If I should ever die
Return me to the fire
If I should live again
return me to myself.
Heart fire,
flame in hurricane-lamp
Outside, into this storm.
