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Dec 25, 2016 Book Review…, Features / Columnists
The Road’s End: A Journey in Poetry
Author: Roma Sinanan
Critic: Dr Glenville Ashby
Educator Roma Sinanan feels the pulse of a dying humanity and offers counsel. Hers is a life shaped by an unyielding quest for truth, and we are surely moved.
The Road’s End: A Journey in Poetry is rooted in existentialist thought. Self and nature are seen in concert and are presented as a dynamic force, a phenomenon that resides within. Nature is the rhythm of life – creating, destroying, only to create again. It is timeless, eternally valid and manifests in myriad forms – from the tangible to the unseen. With imagery that speaks she details our affinity, our oneness with nature. If only we knew.
Sinanan writes with fluidity, reassurance, and authenticity. She is literal and figurative; reflective and prophetic; sanguine and forcefully compelling. Her catechism is unveiled in “My El Dorado” where she intones, “Your heart bears the treasure, The pleasure you seek, Your heart’s El Dorado, The Gold you behold, The shrine is the soul, Enlivened with love.”
At the outset, Sinanan celebrates the dawn and dusk of existence. The magnanimity of Nature beckons in Morning with Him. “..the hills belong to me, to seek each morn, His presence there To see the stirring of the birds, To hear their sweet beguiling calls, My soul’s heart feels His healing touch, My unrestrained desire inflamed To hold his healing hands, A gentle balm my spirit feels A presence at my Side, And now I am whole, so wholly whole…”
She explores a range of metaphysical subjects including the most pressing of all: What is the purpose of life? Her response is instructive, replete with Taoist principles. There is a cosmic rhythm, an ebb and flow that is never forced nor interrupted. Life is never burdensome. In serving others we are liberated from the seeming travails of living.
Here, Sinanan is at her provocative best. “I have never worked, not a single day in my life,” she pens in “In Service”. “I’ve learnt, I’ve taught, I’ve loved and cared, Rewards exchanged for Rights to live, For what is work – But love displayed, Creating thoughts, Constructing dreams, Realizing hopes, Fulfilling destinies, And this I crave…”
This message reverberates that much louder in “Harvest”. “All that I give…was never mine, Of wealth or worth or time, My hands assigned to pass them on, The gifts to give, God’s own.”
Before dispensing this inexorable truth, Sinanan must explore the magic, the wonderment of creation. No easy feat. But she is undaunted, and unveils its mystery with artful, aesthetical clarity.
“Today saw a cocoon open, a butterfly emerge, I wondered hard, I wondered long,” she writes in Birth. “What pain, what pride the cocoon feel? Such freedom to the air is borne. Tomorrow expects a newborn cry Arising from the womb, I’ll wonder hard, I’ll wonder long, is it joy or fear, smiles or tears? Such offering to the Universe is bred.”
She challenges us to adjust our spiritual bearings. God is within us. We need not look far and wide. Happiness, too, is only transient when we seek to satisfy the senses. The proverbial Elixir of Life cannot be experienced when we are mired in clutter, desires, and self-centeredness.
We learn that silence is golden, indeed. Only then are life’s mysteries decoded; only then can we absorb the whispers, the teachings of the soul. This is Sinanan’s redemption.
But she is ever mindful of evil and will not sanitize an inhumane world. Her sentiments are raw in “I laugh no more” :”There is no need to laugh for everywhere are sad complaints, disdains and pain. No sunshine glows upon their face, bereft of hope, bereft of light I pine with them, I laugh no more.”
Anger, we learn, “pierces the heart, sickens the blood, defiles the body [and] crushes, mangles the soul,” in a poem that bears the title of this fiery emotion.
And in the haunting echoes of “Lost Children”, we read, “I seek them, lost children, Amidst the ruins of family structures ashamed, tightlipped, contained, Fear stricken, ensnared, used, abused, blamed, silenced.” Child of the Dump follows suit.
But Sinanan refuses to labour on pestilence. We have lived on a prayer before, and succeeded. She delivers an ode to faith in “America Rises”. “Katrina’s watery tombs, Sandy’s wet and windy rage, 9-11’s fiery graves,” evoke painful memories. She reminds us of that country’s forbearance.
“Your banners fly with pride… Never may the forces that rock your dignity and sovereignty conquer your indomitable spirit. Survivors you are!” And she refreshingly bucks the trend, speaking glowingly of fathers, the majority of whom are fulfilling their duties. “Fathers, house builders, home creators, toilers, providers, guardians, counselors, ours to cherish…”
Amid global strife and uncertainty, Sinanan teaches courage, resilience, and compassion. And in the vein of the greatest of prophets, seemingly born out of due time, she merges with the Divine through service and gratitude. Her enduring work invites us to respond.
Feedback: [email protected] or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
The Road’s End: A Journey in Poetry by Roma Sinanan
Available as an eBook at Amazon
Rate: Recommended
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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