Among the most recent new books of poetry is In a Boston Night poems by Guyanese poet and fiction writer Sasenarine Persaud, published by TSAR in Canada in 2008. It was one of the many launched in Georgetown in August during Carifesta’s book fair. The poet took part in the festival and personally presented his book in which there are repeated references to his long absence from home. There are several other allusions, intertextual cross-references to other works and writers, to mythologies and to one of his favourite subjects − Hinduism.
Persaud left Guyana a long time ago and joined a growing community of migrant Guyanese writers in Canada, mainly Toronto, before moving to other places, including Boston, USA and Tampa, Florida where he now lives. This collection comes after nine other books of poetry and fiction, and after his receipt of such awards as the KM Hunter Foundation Award and the Arthur Schomburg Award.
In a Boston Night has many poems dealing with what Persaud refers to as his “odyssey” including his past life in Guyana and his travels through North America. These are mixed with the cross-references such as ‘Audience: Walcott in Boston,’ various hints of Naipaul, engagement of the Ramayana and other Hindu texts, and autobiographical pieces such as ‘Half A Life’ (which has its own faint echo of Naipaul). This poem, ‘Odysseys, My Love,’ is a very good representative of the selections in the book because it includes many of the things Persaud does in several other poems there. He makes use of his own journeys, his absence from home, his religion, interweaving them with the Greek and Hindu mythologies, often placing himself alongside the Greek hero Ulysses (Odysseus) and even the divine Ram (Rama).
Ulysses finally returned home after twenty years at war and wandering at sea. After victory in the Trojan War, he was punished by the vengeful sea god Poseidon, who was angry at the defeat of Troy. He was made to wander for ten years, enduring and surviving many dangerous adventures in his attempt to sail home. Ram was maliciously exiled from his rightful inheritance of the throne of Ayodhya and spent fourteen years in the forests and other lands. He endured adventures including the battle against Ravan (variously Rawan, Ravana) and the rescue of Sita from abduction. Ram’s triumphal return to his kingdom in Kosala, Ayodhya, is celebrated at Diwali.
- Sasenarine Persaud
Interestingly, Ulysses’ heroic story is narrated in the great epic The Odyssey while Ram’s heroic exploits are told in the epic Ramayana, a book sacred to Hinduism. Ulysses survived with much help from other gods who helped him fight Poseidon. Ram received immeasurable assistance from Hanuman and other deities against Ravan. Persaud places his own migrations away from home in a similar context, describing his autobiography as an odyssey. But while there are nostalgic references to Georgetown and Guyana, where there is also a place called Ithaca, he also alludes to the crossing of the Kala Pani. Persaud is, therefore, also talking about an exile from India. He mentions the hazardous leaving of India alongside Ulysses and Ram’s hazardous labours, including details of the attack against Ravan and the torching of the city state of Lanka. The poet, then, is concerned with his having been torn away from the seat of his religion, the heartland of Ayodhya.
In this poem, he keeps repeating that, despite separation, he has “kept faith.”
Odysseys, My Love
It was easier for Rama
Or Ulysses, whom you may know
Better – I too have kept faith
With Ithaca having never returned
In an hundred years or more, Hanuman –
Who? That one you may call
“the monkey God” was neither monkey
Nor man: my tail lit by a king’s pride
Is torching a city, the yellow-red flames
Visible across the gulf. Why did we
leave?
Or was that I, I, I – thin lipped men
Promising forests teeming with parakeets
Beyond the Kala Pani. Ulysses consorted
For seven years with swine loving women
Made music on calypso’s bed. Still
I have not returned after fourteen years
And you will now understand that
question:
What is our Ithaca, where our Ayodhya?
Georgetown, where red samans fall
on Main Street, and cassia-golden rods
rival the midday sun, and sugarcane
swaying to the dholak of coconut palms,
where the sweeter-than-honey sapodillas
ripen and fall on an evening
bed of waiting toast leaves?
I have kept faith, I tell you – Ulysses’
Nothing like Rama’s knowing Hanuman’s
Chest, when opened to Sita, is a flower
Still scented and waiting your touch.
This keeping of faith that is repeated in the poem has other meanings. The poem, after all, is a love song: to a woman, but also to Guyana? to India? to the Hindu faith? He refers to the love between Ram and Sita and hints at that between Ulysses and his wife Penelope. In circumstances of great adversity, including their separation and what happens as a result of it, Ram kept faith with the faithful Sita, never giving her up. In fact, the story of Ram and Sita is one of faith, purity and conquest of good over evil.
Similarly, in twenty years of separation, the Greek couple kept faith with each other. The poem makes reference to a few of ULlysses’ adventures, including his encount-er with the sorceress Calypso who seduced him and turned his men into swine. He could have continued his surrender to her sweet charms and remained on the island “making music in her bed,” but he was resolved to get back home to his wife and managed after a while to devise a way of outwitting her.
But the poet missed an irony. While Penelope kept unshaken faith in her husband, fighting off powerful and importunate suitors, he showed little trust in her. When he finally returned home, he did so in disguise, sneaking up to spy on her, to make sure she had been faithful to him all those years.
Quite out of line with the rest of the poem, and quite unnecessarily, Persaud betrays a trait common in his early poems but much less evident in these, his later ones. It has to do with unhelpful detail, such as his mention of “Ulysses, whom you may know better” and “Hanuman − Who? That one you may call the monkey God” in a kind of subtle contemptuous reference to western ignorance of Hinduism as against a common embracing of the Greek myths.
The poem ‘Odysseys, My Love’ places the poet in these mythical, archetypal (heroic?) contexts. He exploits the use of the term ‘odyssey,’ which is derived from ULlysses’ other name, ‘Odysseus’ and well settled in normal English usage to articulate a personal journey, a personal faith, to articulate issues of migration and ‘exile’ in a love poem.
