Tomorrow and the World
I am most happy
as I walk the seller of sweets says “friend”
and the shoemaker with his awl and waxen thread
reminds me of tomorrow and the world.
Happy is it to shake your hand
and to sing with you, my friend.
Smoke rises from the furnace of life
– red red red the flames!
Green grass and yellow flowers
smell of mist the sun’s light
everywhere the light of the day
everywhere the songs of life are floating
like new ships on a new river sailing, sailing.
Tomorrow and the world
and the songs of life and all my friends –
Ah yes, tomorrow and the whole world
awake and full of good life.
– Martin Carter
.Ol’ Higue
You think I like this stupidness –
gallivanting all night without skin,
burning myself out like cane fire
to frighten the foolish?
And for what? A few drops of baby blood?
You think I wouldn’t rather take my blood
Seasoned in fat like everyone else?
And don’t even talk ‘bout the pain of salt
and having to bend these old bones down
to count a thousand grains of rice!
If only babies didn’t smell so nice!
And if I could only stop
hearing the soft, soft call
of pure blood running in new veins
singing the sweet song of life
tempting an old dry-up woman who been
holding her final note for years and years,
afraid of the dying hum. . .
then again if I don’t fly and come
to that fresh pulse in the middle of the night,
how would you, mother,
name your ancient dread?
And who to blame
For the murder inside your head. . .?
Believe me –
As long as it have women giving birth
a poor ol’ higue like me can never dead.
– Mark McWatt
Law and Order
Chief Justice of the bedraggled streets,
withered body of dainty bones,
he rode his bicycle around the town
equipped with bells and whistles,
with noticeboards depicting famous crimes
and criminals, and a little coffin showing skulls.
Now and then he would dismount
and give a graphic picture show.
Shackled prisoners stumble in a row;
he puts on black hat and tattered gown
and with stately dignity announces
the guilty verdict. Nothing else would do.
Death by strangulation rope he called it.
Set up his cardboard gallows
to show the fate of executed men.
With grimacing and lolling tongue,
staring eyes to put fear in children,
he flung his hanged head to and fro.
Public nuisance you might have thought, but no,
Some always gathered to see the show.
They say he was a judge gone crazy.
I doubt it, but you never know.
– Ian McDonald
About Poetry by Martin Carter
From a particular position it seems more than ordinarily useful to think of poems as codes. Also since poets are conventionally lumped with other artists it is also to suggest that while the poet makes use of art in the organisation of his code or codes, he is not an artist in the same way, for instance, as a musician or a painter or a sculptor. Whitman in his preface to his Leaves of Grass said: ‘The poetic quality is not marshalled in rhyme or uniformity or abstract addresses to things or in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and much else. . .’
Every time someone construes a true poem he makes one. He completes, as it were, the poet’s ‘breaking into the chain’. Every proper reading is also another kind of completion. But every proper reading is only as significant as the original code is significant; which is as much as to say that the code itself is a true poem.
So what elevates a given code to the status of a true poem? To attempt an answer one must attempt an interpretation of a true code. If as is advanced here, a code is something based on actuality; something itself which provides the ground or the possibility of expression, then herein the code becomes a knack.
A knack is the mutuality of stimulability. Hence what follows.
Star code and tree fruit. Shout
in the throat of the music of my loss.
Rain. The nymph of a grasshopper
laughs. Flood surrounds the fence
of the heron’s knotted ankle. Cattle
man or beast of water, when I tried
I touched. When I touched
I found myself. The frail udder
of love waits for strong fingers.
This code of stars has been a long time waiting
and when my feet scuffle, the leaves of trees talk.
The Republic of Guyana observed the 56th anniversary of its independence as a nation on May 26, and celebrations are continuing. Whatever merriment and official stately events there might be, there will always be the evaluation of national achievements since the lowering of the Union Jack in 1966. In answer to any question about what has been gained, one can point to national literature. As such, here exhibited to take a prominent place alongside the revels and festivities, are selections from the carnival of Guyanese literature.
This may be seen as the continuation of a mini series. Some three weeks ago there was a celebration of selections from the national literature, showing work relevant to the marking of Indian Arrival in British Guiana, while today’s selections highlight other significant contributions. These may illustrate the strong vein of nationalism both pre and post-independence; attention to the nation’s oral literature, folklore and performance traditions; and a statement about literature itself. In presenting this, an opportunity is taken to pay homage to Guyana’s great literary genius, Martin Carter, often honoured with the title ‘National Poet’.
Carter’s poem “Tomorrow and the World” was written in the 1950s, and properly belongs to pre-independence poetry. But it is a sound representation of the literature that signalled the rise of poetry with a sense of nation building and identity. The first signs of this were advanced by Egbert Martin (Leo), which helped his reputation as the founder of modern Guyanese literature. There were traces of it in CEJ Ramcharitar Lalla, with strong signals in Walter McA Lawrence and led with a sustained perseverance by AJ Seymour.
Those strains were to alter and deepen after 1966, but this poem by Carter illustrates one of its qualities. It is not typical Carter, whose preoccupations rarely showed this high level of a celebration of mankind. But Carter’s bonding with people – the shoemaker, the seller of sweets – is a hallmark of the poet’s proletarian ideology. “About Poetry” is taken from Carter’s prose. It appeared in the magazine Kaie, July 14, 1976, and is also documented by Nigel Westmaas in the Martin Carter Prose Sampler, Kyk-Over-Al. It is one of Carter’s statements on poetry.
Both Mark McWatt and Ian McDonald are inspired by local cultural traditions and represent national literature grounded in those. McDonald describes a legend of Guyanese folk characters who performed on the streets of Georgetown. This man earned the name “Law and Order” and was a well-known traditional performer.
McWatt dramatises a Guyanese folklore character, the supernatural Ol Higue, an old woman who transforms herself at night to feed on the blood of babies. McWatt’s dramatic monologue touches on a number of features and allows the character to speak for herself. It is the best known poem about the Ol Higue, along with the famous work of Wordsworth McAndrew.
Interestingly, McWatt has produced two outstanding works steeped in thoughts of Guyanese independence. The powerful prize-winning fiction Suspended Sentences (2006) and a poem “Untilled”.
