Love in a time of Technology

My friend Sasenariane Persaud sent me his latest collection of poems Love in a time of Technology (Tsar/Mawenzi 2014) several months ago.

I’m no literary critic, and my understanding and appreciation of poetry is non-academic. I like poetry that touches my heart and makes me misty eyed. And by those simple standards, Sase's latest collection is one of the most exquisite collections of poems I’ve read in recent times. 

I read it and re-read it several times.

I wanted to review it in April, which is celebrated as poetry month in Toronto.

Divided into four parts, the poems are about love, longing, and belonging; about remembering, nostalgia, and memory; and about desires that are both carnal and chaste. The poet is on a journey and wants to take you on the ride of a lifetime.

In the first section – Love in a time of technology – the poems that stay with you for a long time are 'In Hickson Park: Tampa on the River,' and 'The Promise.' 

In the first, the poet wants to take you “where laughter fills the night.” And in the second, the poet reminiscences longingly about the girl who has transformed, as he reminds her that “the apology wounding as much as it heals.”

In Hickson Park: Tampa on the River

I want to take you

where white lights

glow on deleafed winter

 oaks like icicles,

where the dark river

floats a rubber slipper

inland – away from the bay

invading our souls,

where water erupts

under spotlights

like our love once

I want to take you

where laughter fills the night

The Promise 

The falling coin striking tiles

rolls into a corner

you have ceased looking at.

Where is the girl who gave

unreservedly whose eyes held

promises you could not keep;

where is she whose silence

freed and trapped you

in a sub-tropical garden?

The fallen disc rests on cold ceramic –

your pocket is laden with plastic

that slide in and out of readers

accepting your promise to pay tomorrow –

is today a circle cartwheeling out of reach,

the apology wounding as much as it heals.

The section Elsewhere is about places that the poet hails from and / or belongs to both physically and metaphorically. The poem 'In Our Heads' captures the ephemeral essence of the section.

In Our Heads

Fireflies light our heads

in an afternoon

when there are none

must be pre-festival fireworks

or the stars that light

journeys to other worlds

This feeling of an immigrant’s loneliness is exemplified manifold in the next section – Storm, where in 'Tulips,' the poet laments

And if in spring

I sing promises to tulips

instead of marigolds

 daffodils instead of oleanders

or at my desk bite

an apple instead of a turmeric

mango – not concealed pleasure

on the side – it is because

I have no country

but the country of Gandhi’s Gita.

The two masterpieces in the collection are 'Returning to a Far Country' and 'Georgetown,' and both are about a time that has gone by, a time that won’t return. Although 'Far Country' concludes triumphantly, it’s a tragic remembrance of a time that won’t return:

and there was no greater rain

and there was no greater city

on no greater country

in no greater time

than this time of our love

Georgetown is the most evocative poem in the collection

'Georgetown'

For evenings on the seawall

drinking soup thickened with coconut milk,

melting cassava, sweet potatoes and plantains;

for your smile in the mornings, a wave

from your platform as we pass, the trade wind

in our faces; for parched peanuts jumping

out fingers unto sand and breakers exploding

on old brick groynes jutting into the Atlantic’s

belly and tempering tides as stars flick on;

for conversations on galaxies, or monologues,

what if we are from beyond beyond,

aliens in this space and the ocean spray

sprinkling spectacles and moistening lips;

for a first kiss, or second riding around

the bandstand, the dance of street lights

in your eyes, I would return. I would dare all gun-wielding bandits to walk, linked fingers

with your ghost on the sapodilla brown sand.