Poems of Lall D Persaud

Prologue: I have always been interested in figurative language. There are many times when I will hear or read a story and feel like putting that story in the form of a poem using figurative language. My main objectives are to create a lyrical effect and to stimulate the reader to interpret the story by relating to exotic-like comparisons. I was unable to do any further studies of poetry after Pre- GCE in December 1979 to really know how to properly construct a poem; yet I have this urge to want to write them.
 
I was working at a Spring Manufacturing Shop transforming medium carbon steel into heavy truck leaf suspension springs. For the longest while I worked the heavy Mack Truck furnace line where the furnace table moved every 45 seconds. I would let the table move about 10 spaces before I loaded it. Similarly, at the unloading end I would pull out a bunch of the red hot steel bars and quench them to gain idle time.
 
During that interim spaces of time I read the Toronto Sun and do its Daily Crossword Puzzle at the loading end, and muse about the stories I read or the clues of words  I was stuck with on the crossword at the unloading end.

 When Janet Jagan won the Guyana Presidency I started a ‘poem’ entitled “Power,” attempting to tie democracy in Guyana in the context of the struggles between Communist USSR and Capitalist USA with loads of figures of speech.

During the same period, there were conflicts around the world (the painful break up of Yugoslavia and the intervention of the UN/US, the Rwanda/Burundi ethnic cleansing, an escalation of the Israeli/Palestinian saga, The Russian/Chechnya conflict, the Babri mosque conflict in India, the WTO Conference in Seattle, etc). The idle time I have at the unloading end of the furnace gave me time to really regurgitate words to describe the stories reported.

I started to write my thoughts in the form of poems on the back of production sheets. I wrote “War” and “Wombs” first. Later, when Bill Clinton hosted a conference on the Middle East with the late King Hussein and the late Yitzhak Rabin. I wrote ‘Intellect of Peace’.

The shooting at Columbine really made me uneasy and I wrote “Columbine.”

Other poems I wrote are Pardon, Labour, Guyana’s Scar, Poverty, To Sports, To A Friend, My Lady, Rainbow, Fleeting Love, To Stefan and Djana, Music, The Legacy of King Hussein  and some untitled pieces.

When the flight of man’s intelligence sets upon its zenith,
And blasts its brilliance on the menace of ignorance,
No longer will dreams of harmony fetch fright
And the penance of peace its silence.
Oh once imprisoned peace! Spread the blossoms of your presence
And let the breath of all scroll your incense.

Whenever the folly of feud ferments its potions,
Where the lustre of intellect is rusted dull,
Oh peace! Pierce the conscience of opinion the vastness of options,
Adorn upon it your diadem of wisdom full
To clear the reedy mind and set truth its path
So that purity is rightly restored to thought.

Should tribalism strive to steal tranquil,
Let intellect delve the dermis, under into the arteries,
And stun the tyrants with its natural hue fill,
Like on dark clouds, the boisterous breeze
Rips apart their murky intent,
Ushering the eyes to perceive clear the human content.

And when the curse of commerce’s legacies
Grips the penniless its subhuman honour
Amid skillful illusions of senseless odysseys,
Let intelligence embrace extravagance, The Mother
Of cold Hunger, befriend her, temper the coffers
In her breasts to teem treasures, so none suffers.

Thence, the horizon o’er where darkness preys
On mankind, lucent intellect will dawn its prongs,
Razing the rungs strung by agonies with prized days,
And beauteous peace will tutor the tongues of man its songs
The joyous victories o’er yester sorrows,
And yes, bliss has dismissed penance the hour we arose.

The wrath of War wrestles to weaken wisdom,
Its call careth not compassion, but to condemn.
Harden hearts throb to hearken hell’s humour,
That the glory of gory greatness in grandeur
Sanctions the passion to specter all a horrific profusion:
What man, his habitations, and happiness thrives upon,
To butcher with bitter blind bravery till bare,
The sweet sanguine songs of existence care.

When at dawn War dresses its sharp dagger,
To the dust till dusk sinks needless slaughter.
At the might of night when Stealths sneak,
Raining its reign of ruin till reek
On the bastions of blossom and bosom,
As if mama nature is crafting a gloom
And mortals moan her innocence,
So seem seers searching for sanity’s presence.

And how do liars loft their throne!
That divine revelations herald revenge to be borne,
Appeasing their spirits with spatial fallacies
That mirth on earth is death and its vices,
Perceiving not that a martyr pyre perishes
Not by the brook of tears that on his headstone washes.
For infatuated falsehood the Sceptre propagates,
Heeding not the horrendous crimes It creates.
And utter; utter nonsense the Sceptre purport
That the heavens beckon war for comfort.