Ian McDonald

Thirty years ago, I wrote a poem in honour of the Brazilian labour leader and environmentalist Chico Mendes, who was assassinated because of his campaign to preserve the Amazonian rainforest.

I hear the chorus: “poetry is boring”, “poetry is impossible to understand”, “poetry is irrelevant,” “poetry has no place in this computer age,” “poetry is for academics.”

I remember a very long time ago, in the era of Prime Minister—not even then President—L.F.S.

Guyana is in the midst of a bitter and divisive struggle.

“You gave me gifts, God-Enchanter. I give you thanks for good and ill.

Religions have blood-soaked histories that justify the scorn which hard-core rationalists like Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, pour on them.

Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet, whose marvelous collection of essays, “The Redress of Poetry,” I like to re-read, writes that W.H.

Every now and then, I travel up the Essequibo River to spend weekends in a small house set on the bank in a clearing of white sand cut from the jungle. 

This business of being old is bothering me. Yes, there are aches and fragilities and coughs and creaks and increasing physical ineptitude of all kinds.

I am not a horse-racing fan nor a lover of horses, however thoroughly bred into strength and beauty they may be, but a friend of mine and connoisseur of many of life’s artistic achievements, including that of great horse-racing, sent me a piece of marvellous writing which figures right up at the top of my list of the best sports articles I have ever read.

In my sports career I always had difficulty training hard. When I got to a certain point quite far up the tennis ladder, I realised that trying to step up the last few rungs was going to take a terrible toll in unending hours of soul-destroying practice and relentless physical conditioning.

Having long outlived the Biblical span of three score years and ten, I realise more and more clearly that this overtime gifted by the Gods must be very carefully husbanded.

Education is important not simply for the implantation of specific information about specific subjects but, perhaps more importantly, for the passing on of a whole “culture” of learning, attitudes, and behaviour – a variety of distinct “languages” of understanding, including self-understanding.

The memory of man is astonishing and mysterious. How can one account for the fact that my old Aunt Anna, at the age of 92, could not recall what she had been told an hour before yet could delight one with a most joyfully and meticulously remembered account of a dance she had attended 76 years before, when she was 16, describing exactly the dress she wore that whirled around her ankles as she waltzed and the sip of wine she had from a glass embossed with cupids and the naval officer she danced with whose beard curled precisely so?

Many of us, at some time or another, have resolved to “keep a diary,” probably as part of some grand and comprehensive plan to organize one’s life better and achieve great things – plans, I am afraid, which soon run aground on the dangerous shoals of everyday living. 

Not many Guyanese, I am sure, think much about it but we have a National Trust whose high and shining objective is to preserve the national heritage.

What follows, is simply a human cry of despair from one poor innumerate wretch who finds himself lost in the new terminologies, the scientific progress and the whole terrible onslaught of up-to-date technical jargon.

Politicians love to praise themselves or arrange for others to praise them.

When one thinks about it, the concept of “Government” is a strange one for it assumes as its fundamental premise that certain men and women – human beings like you and me – can and should be allowed to take upon themselves the right to direct the rest of us what to do, presumably for our own good.

I have been re-reading Derek Walcott and realising how much I have loved his poetry.