[To commemorate (in my own way) the day we remember one of America's most celebrated civil rights leaders (Martin Luther King, Jr.) here's an abridged version of Guyanese poet, Balwant Bhagwandin's raw and stirring poem "i hear guyana cry!"]
i hear guyana cry!
i hear
not as the last time
when children cried
from the depths of bare bloated bellies
and their parents were put in jail
even killed
for seeking formula for the baby
and bread or roti for the family
because the megalomaniac
for our leader had decreed
from the presidential villa at Belfield
that babies could sprout
into nation-building scholars and stalwarts
on bush boiled in ground water
banded bellies
and sweet talk
of a cassava-and-milk Caanan
...
i hear
agony for the violation
of a pubertal daughter
after her earlobe or finger
was cheerfully chewed off
by a savage
for a trinket
and the bumptious silence of the woman
whose womb had issued
that repugnance
to live as blood-hungry predator
die as dog diseased and mad
...
i hear
pullulating anguish for lives
snipped at the short end
as by a seamstress’ scissors superfluous string
by barbarians with butchers for brethren
for a pocketful of coins
of rate enough
in the village cake-shop for a few pounds
of rice
and payment for service
of prostitutes, politicians and purveyors
of perfidy and filth;
whose killing fields spread
from boardrooms to banks and bordellos
from playgrounds schoolrooms
and the humble but hallowed homes
of common folks
into the sanctum sanctorum
of the House of God
...
i hear not
the greetings and kind words
of friend to friend
concern of neighbor for neighbor
brother for brother
i hear not
the music and merriment of celebrations
the drums of kaandel queh-queh and kangan
as if the cadence of death had preempted
the cycles of commencement and continuance
i hear not
sympathy and somberness at a funeral
solemnity in a cortege
comfort at a wake
i hear not
the squeals and yells
laughter of children at play and lighthearted
i hear not
of plans and visions
exhilaration for the dawn;
...
and those for whom is duty to hear
have chosen
not to listen
or deem what they hear delusion
and those that listen
ought not to hear
more of the despair
being birthed by this barbarism
for kolcha
whose fecundity would better
the best ameba
that feeds only to replicate itself
and overrun the ameba population
were not its obscene bittle of blood
subject to limitations
of quantity…
(June 2, 2002 11.22AM)
