Ian McDonald

There are times my wife and I go up the great Essequibo to stay at the beautiful river-home of my brother-in-law and his wife.

The love of games is woven into the fabric of my life.

Two impulses contend in me – one is to allow chaos to take hold and the other is to keep everything tidy and in good order.

Our lives of such infinite value come and go in a whirl of busyness. 

I make visits up the great Essequibo to rest the body, refresh the mind and remind the soul of the beauty in this world.

I do not think the intelligent and opened-minded Minister of Education minds me delivering little, well-meant lectures to her from time to time.

It is necessary to repeat again and again that in the background of all our lives there exists a fundamental and dominating lie.

In my home, a step down off the dining room, overlooking the beautiful garden my wife has created, I have my studiolo. 

I thank whatever Gods that be that even at the age of 89 my mind remains restless and eager to absorb new facts, new theories, new ways of looking at life and the world, new stories of mankind’s continual search for perfected knowledge, new illuminations of the spirit.

Giacomo Leopardi, who was to become one of the greatest poets of his time, was born in 1798 on his parents’ estate near the small Italian town of Recanati in the dusty hills above the Adriatic sea.

At thirteen, I think it was, I was reading love poetry.

Most of a New Year has passed away. This seems astonishing to me.

“Most things never happen: this one will”.  Poets write more frequently about death than any other subject, except possibly love.

I tell the story of Tony Judt. Tony Judt was a writer on recent world history whom I greatly admired. 

For many years I have been gradually collecting poems written about Guyana or by Guyanese from as early as possible to the present day for the purpose of preparing and publishing an entirely new and comprehensive Anthology of Guyanese Poetry.

My tutor at Cambridge, Professor Nick Hammond, authority on the history of ancient Macedonia and on the life of Alexander the Great, used to coach me on what he called “exercises of the mind.”

Samuel Johnson, that great man of letters and heavyweight of good sense in eighteenth century England, commonly said the people whom we should most beware in the world are those who constantly insist on finding fault, those whose clouds are never lit by silver linings, those who everlastingly “refuse to be pleased.”

Recently I re-read for the umpteenth time one of Derek Walcott’s earlier books, The Star-Apple Kingdom.

At nearly 90 I am not, to say the least, as mobile as I used to be.

There are some things that keep out the darkness that continually threatens in anyone’s life.