Ian McDonald

I have always loved libraries. Nearly 70 years have passed since I went to Cambridge and first visited the Seeley Historical Library near the Senate House.

Again and again and again the words written by the great Russian Alexander Herzen about childhood should come back to haunt and accuse us.

Good poems are instantly recognizable. They startle, shock new life into old ideas, impress on the mind patterns of beauty and truth previously unnoticed.

We live in harrowing times – there is no doubt about that. 

The most famous love poem ever written, with the possible exception of the Song of Solomon, is a poem entitled ‘Ad Pyrrham’ by the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, better known as Horace.

It is extremely important that you pay attention to what today’s column says if you wish to live a longer, healthier, more alert and happier life.

For thirty years Al Creighton has been commenting in the Sunday Stabroek on literature, theatre, dance, music, art and all the arts.

I once read an article about one of the most remarkable men of the 20th Century.

In his great book Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon, in writing about the reign of Titus Pius, commented in passing that history was “little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”

I remember having an interesting discussion with an old Jesuit priest in which I wondered whether a number of venial sins committed could ever add up to being as bad as one mortal sin.

In a perfect world the pen would always be mightier than the sword and intellect would always defeat brute force.

The spirit grows weary with the weight of woe in the world at large.

Another birthday has come and gone.  I hear old Sam Beckett’s pessimistic shout: “We breathe, we change!

When I am in any great city I search out the bookstores and in them spend what are hours of pure pleasure.

A day is dulled and dimmed if it passes and I do not pick up a book of poems in my library, browse in some anthology, find a new poem in the latest issue of Poetry Review or The New Yorker or some other magazine or at least before my eyes shut glance at some old favourite lines from Hopkins, Walcott, Yeats, Carter or a score of other supreme masters of the art and craft of making poems.

Sometimes I travel up the Essequibo River to spend weekends in a house set on the bank in a clearing of white sand cut from the jungle. 

In this unbrotherly time I wish to invoke again the name of Voltaire.

Nowadays I really only travel in the mind. Many blessings – no security checks; no immigration or customs hassle, instantaneous arrival at fascinating destinations.

Consider these aspects: ●             The bedrock of marriage – You can generally recognize a good marriage, but it is hard to tie down the details. 

There is nothing more valuable in man than an ability to write well.