Cane
· You were born of cane
Not as the planters hoped –
Barefooted, beggardly of mind –
But hugely wise, a soul blown high
By the incensed breath
Of a cankered slave:
Cane made you a vision of mankind.
So let the empty-handed, toothless, blind,
The endless poor, the desperate, the folk,
Those whom we spurn, debauch or trade,
Come, for in you they will find
What is most healing in mankind,
Your hands forever open, giving, fatherly;
Your ceaseless heart, your mind’s nobility.
– David Dabydeen
Spirit
The spirit of a great man gone
Stays on …
To give the many left behind
New hope … even in despair …
To give the few
Who share the great responsibility
New strength … to guide – you to plan – to serve
Even as we mourn
Even as we mourn …
Cry out the gladness of another day
For us who wept to watch him pass that way
The sun will still glow brightly on the street
And from these somber hours
Golden flowers of promise at our feet.
Pluck them now
A better morning to adorn
and build a blessing of this curse
even as we mourn.
– Helen Taitt
Change his dream
“The name Cheddi Jagan has acquired, for more than one generation, the feel of permanence and awe which time confers on certain historical monuments. And, there was something monumental in the consistency of purpose and the unique kind of dedication which he brought to the public life of the people of Guyana.
“Through the People’s Progressive Party in the early 1950s, Jagan created an environment of expectation and a sense of possibilities which affected, in one way or another, every section of Guyanese society.
“It set the tone of intellectual discourse and influenced the mood and themes of creative expression. This was the soil from which the early work of the poet, Martin Carter, blossomed.
“And if we look at the major intellectual figures in the area of history and literature in the contemporary Caribbean: the example of Rodney in history and one of the most illuminating and original critics of literature, Gordon Rohlehr; it is not by accident that their particular thrust or emphasis is what it is.
“They were, in a particular sense, the product of that environment which had been created by the PPP.
“‘I do not sleep to dream, but dream to change the world’
“That this dream suffered a dramatic collapse from which the people of Guyana have not yet recovered, this misfortune does not in any way diminish Dr Jagan’s great virtues as a leader who worked tirelessly to create a human solidarity among all ranks of the Guyanese people.
“If we trace his social evolution from the stark poverty of a sugar plantation childhood to the highest office in the land, there is a certain logic in the contours of that journey.
“He had recalled his mother relating how she worked in the mud at Port Mourant from seven in the morning to six at night for eight cents a day and also three times a week from midnight to six in the morning hauling in bagasse in the factory.
“Cheddi himself never wore shoes until he was twelve.
“It is not difficult to relate these experiences to Jagan’s admiration and identification with the personal manifesto of the United States labour leader Eugene Debs.
“‘While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free in the struggle, the increasing struggle between the toilers and producers and their exploiters. I have tried as best I can to serve those among whom I was born and with whom I expect to share my lot to the end of my days.’
There is no Caribbean leader who has been so frequently cheated of office, none who has been so grossly misrepresented, and no one who, in spite of such adversity, was his equal in certainty of purpose and the capacity to go on and on until his time had come to take leave of us.
“And in my own personal experience, I know no other Caribbean leader with whom sharp and wide disagreement could also be the occasion for a warm and fraternal embrace.”
– George Lamming
[David Dabydeen, (Ed.), Cheddi Jagan: Tributes In Verse and Prose, Coventry, UK, Rose Hall Press, 1998. pp 64]
The Cheddi Jagan Research Centre at Red House in Georgetown, Guyana, recently published Volume 4 of The Thinker, a magazine whose editorial committee comprises Frank Anthony, Donald Ramotar, Clement Rohee, Hydar Ally and Indra Chanderpal. The edition included several articles dedicated to the work of former president of Guyana Cheddi Jagan. It goes wider than this because there are also many other contributions focusing on Guyanese history, politics, culture, science and world affairs. But the editorial committee highlighted the memory of Jagan.
This recalls another significant publication from 1998 out of the Coventry campus of the University of Warwick and mainly spearheaded by Guyanese born Professor David Dabydeen, who is also a prize-winning novelist, poet, editor, broadcaster and filmmaker. Dabydeen, who headed the Centre for Caribbean Studies at Warwick, collaborated with others to produce a collection of poetry and prose which were submitted as tributes to the late Guyanese president, one year after his death in 1997. This publication is titled Cheddi Jagan: Tributes in Prose and Verse, edited by Dabydeen and published in Coventry, England, by the Rose Hall Press.
This publication emphasised Jagan as a leader of an anti-colonial movement, a man from humble, plantation origins who cared for and inspired the working class, who travelled from towns and tiny villages, across mighty and inhospitable rivers to mourn him in March, 1997. As Dabydeen articulates it in the introduction to the collection:
“The tributes included in this volume are a sample of such expressions of grief. Some of the writers are professional literary figures, but the overwhelming number are people who had never before published a single word. Still, their response was to take up pen and try to shape their emotion on the page, to give its expression a beauty and a care worthy of the memory of their hero. Hundreds of poems and miscellaneous verses flooded into the editorial offices of the national news-papers. I saw many of the originals: they were scribbled on leaves from exercise-books, and on whatever other pieces of paper people could find. Some were in broken pencil-point and halting ink. Others were scrupulously presented in type. In other words, people of varying social conditions – the city folk with computers and typewriters, the country folk with only scraps of pens and pencils – besieged the newspapers with their testimonies of love and loss. From the evidence of their names, and from personal acquaintance with a few, I can say with confidence that they represented all the races of Guyana. Cheddi Jagan’s death revealed a national unity which was the true instinct of the people of Guyana, in spite of the inducements of the ‘divide-and-rule’ politicians”.
In these circumstances, it is normal to find an unevenness in the quality of writing, as is much in evidence in this collection. The editor might have striven to represent a fair cross section of contributors even while still trying to ensure that all the selections were readable. What is achieved in the volume is a mixed expression of different cultural and religious persuasions among the writers, giving the publication some strength and literary value.
Of course, there are contributions from a number of leading literary lights and other personalities including Lamming, Ian McDonald, Jan Carew, Janet Naidu, Janet Jagan, Taitt, Churaumanie Bissundyal, and Navin Chanderpal.
Unsurprisingly, Lamming, famed novelist and post-colonial critic; Dabydeen, exceptional artist and docu-mentalist; and Taitt, famous dancer, expert at ballet, poet and playwright, blend tribute with deep considerations of universal social and political themes affecting the state of Guyana, of the world, and of all humanity.