-‘Often the urge comes that I speak with you’
IT IS difficult finding appropriate poetic discourses on fatherhood in our literature. However, redemption and elucidation were found in the few pieces I have unearthed. This first piece, ‘For My Father’, written by A. J. Seymour, will, I hope, throw some light on my dilemma. (Or is it the dilemma of our literature?)

Often the urge comes that I speak with you.

You fathered me
I never knew you
Your age and mine never contemporary
No exchanged views, see how your mind worked
How to open to new ideas was your cathedral
And wander thro’ the broad streets of your spirit

Then the poet, on becoming a father, wrote in ‘For My Sons and Daughters’ a prayer, admonition, and advise for the wellbeing of his children.
As if to echo those sentiments, Sasenarine Persaud writes in ‘Father and Son contemplating Boxing Day’ about ‘waiting half a century to articulate/father-son laundry’.
I can relate to this, for Sasenarine Persaud’s father is my father, and I have had my full share of halting communion with my father.
Then the poet, Persaud, on becoming a father, asked the question in parenthesises, ‘can I ever be a good and proper father’ after:

‘watch the time, check
the temperature of the bottled formula
get you fed, get you home on time
for cereal, the cleanup, the morning nap

I remember my father for many things, but I have not done much in my line of work to show this remembrance. I have written two poems on that matter, two poems only, one in 1997, and the other more recently. This one is about my father towing me on his ‘big-ben’ bicycle…

wheels tunin roun an roun faas-fass
breeze flyin pass mih face nice-nice
mih daddy a-tow mih
pon e big-ben bicycle slowish-faas
faastah daddy faastah
po man struggling foh balance
jis now, son, jis now
faastah daddy faastah…
dat’s how mih foot geh ketch in de spokes….

My father was a gifted player of the mandolin, the strings of which instrument kept us tied to India.  He was also a man of riddles, all of which appeared to have come out of India (retold with a bit of local flavour). 
The story riddle was of great interest to all, the immense fascination due to its participatory nature.  The story riddle was a long, step-by-step, engaging story clouded in allegories and analogies, crowded with information, with the challenge at the end.  The story riddle was usually triggered by the word ‘seriatim’.
‘Seriatim’ were sessions of stories, within stories, within stories… My father gave me storytelling, resulting in ‘The Balgobin Saga’, Hansib Publication, 2008.

Even in difficult times, fathers will be fathers. Martin Carter, writing from prison inquiring from his wife, ‘Tell me, the young one, is he creeping now/and is he well and mischievous as ever?’ And in the poem, ‘For My Son’, he wrote:

The street is in darkness
Children are sleeping
Mankind is dreaming
It is midnight

It is midnight
The sun is away
Stars peep at cradles
Far seems the day

Who will awaken
One little flower
Sleeping and growing
Hour by hour

Drew is awake
Morning is soon
Mankind is risen
Flowers will bloom.

While preparing a brief biography on Ian McDonald, he cautioned me to include the family. A large percentage of the poems in his prize-winning book, ‘Between Silence and Silence’, is devoted to the family — his family. Here is a ‘Small Poem for all Fathers’:

To alarm their fathers half to death
new born babies hold their breath
(mothers long by Nature schooled
rarely let themselves be fooled)
and gurgle when the jape succeeds:
attention is one of baby’s needs…
night after night, it never fails:
he has to check the infant’s breath:
sleep perhaps – but is it death?
So it has been since time began
and will be so until the end of Man.

Father or son, father and son, repeat this refrain, ‘often the urge comes that I speak with you’, and be constrained to action, don’t let it be said that neither party has failed to try.

WHAT’S HAPPENING:
•    A UNESCO-sponsored one-week creative writing workshop is set for Monday, August 8, 2011, between 09:00h and 16:00h. This project will be supervised by Writers in Concert (WICK), headed by Mr. Petamber Persaud. Limited places are available on a ‘first-come-first-serve’ basis. Facilitators will include local and international teachers/writers. The venue is the national Library. In order to apply, please email me your intention.

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