Fly a poem instead
Easter is in the air – here, there and everywhere but it was not easy finding published references to Easter in the literature of Guyana. I waded through numerous poems and leafed through a number of books available to me eventually settling for the work of one writer to redeem us.

Arthur James Seymour was a poet, literary critic, radio programmer/broadcaster, anthologist, ‘nativist publisher’ and cultural historian and his poetry reflected those vocations.

He was a very religious person; Elma, his wife, in her autobiography, ‘A Goodly Heritage’ mentioned that religion was like literature and vice versa to him; Seymour’s life was a personification of those two disciplines.

It is not without significance therefore that in his religious poems, Seymour would devote space to Easter which symbolises the resurrection of Christ which is the foundation of the faith of Christianity.

Here are two poems to keep us company this Easter.

To Easter
Easter, you run upon us with a leap
Steeping us in the sun of your glory
Your story honeyed with reverence from long ago.

Easter, so silent is the hush of your tomb
Gloomy with the dusk of the old words
Like swords, violent once, now sheathed in grace.

Face radiant now, O Easter, drew the veil
Who saw the tale report the linen clothes
Reposing where the heart had lain.

Again, O Easter, run and leap and steep
Ungloom the tomb, unsword the words
The linen clothes repose, your story’s glory.

That poem was taken from ‘Selected Poems’ published in 1965. The next poem published more than two decades earlier was taken from ‘More Poems’ published in 1940.

Easter, 1940
Merrily children flaunt their kites and run
After the gaiety whirling and now falling
And crowding all the hallow of the sky.

And voices have been raised in a thanksgiving
Circling the world, but the words, the words are dead
Shuttled by habit…and God’s blood spills out
Lost in a waste of other blood and sweat,
Mocking the needlessness of pain.

And yet when love, still clothed in flesh, lay mangled
And when grace dawned that first day of the week
Angels stuck harps and lyres and instruments
To greet the sacrifice.
Symbols, the brightest of them, empty their meaning
When they are rubbed by use…as the rain’s hands
Wipe out the characters from sculptured tombs
With their caressing and leave vacant stone.

In closing, the message this Easter 2010, would clearly be to hear ‘a rooster call…To wake all sleeping men’.

To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com

What’s Happening
•    Look out for the National Library’s celebration of World Book and Copyright Day in April
•    Look out for the staging of the next ‘The Journey’ – an ongoing literature event hosted by the National Art Gallery, Castellani House.