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Reading Time 2 mins
November 1, 2021
“All that presupposes my critical approach to my own practice as an artist; and those that Eye teach–the root of lessons that may inspire them to engage their creative tendencies with sterner ardour and, of course, to that end of self, longing for grace.” LeRoy Clarke, “To Know Knowing…Know,” T&T Review, February 2012
LeRoy Clarke. KNOWN MYSTERY – Caribbean Review
Sunity Maharaj, a respected columnist for the Trinidad Express and former Managing Director of The Lloyd Best Institute of the Caribbean, penned a detailed recollection of Le Roy’s numerous accomplishments. His paintings. His poetry. His philosophy. His books. She was his friend. She would know. But I remember him differently.
Le Roy Clarke was a strong poet. The world of the strong poet opens to vibrations of sensing and only glimmers of resonance. Yet, he knew of the secrets uncovered in glimpses. He held no hands to return to a safe distance but consumed memory to emerge at the start of new beginnings. Over and over again, he embraced the question marks the way you and I might be comforted by a good prescription.
To this strong poet, absorbed in a vocabulary unsuited for public discourse, a perceived notion of nearer is where the nexus disappears into the mirage of proximity. De distance is here, he claimed, unwittingly stepping out of (and simultaneously into) a tale told by an idiot. I suppose that’s the nature of (the strong poet’s) reality. Nobody quite knows where here is, and Socratic/platonic notions of wisdom can be no nearer or further than one’s commitment to the beingness of the moment.
Our intellectual tour de force (a mentor in my doctoral projects) taught me to rely on the utility of my beliefs (doing no harm to others) rather than any arguable truthfulness. Useful action, not truth, became my liberating force. Le Roy remained faithful to his belief in untested philosophical mysticism, a curious collaboration of Western ideas, and Afro-centric, ancestral religiosity.
I wrote the poem below to assure myself of the safe love spaces available to the strong poet. Nonetheless, he remained anchored in his certainty and suspicious thumbs up.
AN EYE THERE
(for Le Roy Clarke)
Laughter leaves your smile
Distance softens heartbeat
Breasts harden through
The vile kisses of misdeeds
Earlier dawn dissipates
Into an eternal bend
In the landscape
No safe harbour now
Hope for dry land fades
Into a night of mindless dreams
No sunlit rays and silver streams
Point the verdant lush of birthplace joy
Nothing to tell
I have reached a stage in my life
Where the youthful rage in my life
Subsides before a prophetic tick tock
I am ready. Ready to unlock
Chips and circuits all
On a motherboard, you call
Heart; heartless and wary
An eye there in my head
Sees the grand scheme of nothing
Shaped by shapes, an eye there
Escapes to stand there
In a dream of nothing
The dream is nothing
An eye there, like a spy there
And nowhere in my footsteps.
Does ground echo the thrill
I love you, yes. I love you, sweet.
And so where in my footsteps
Will you know I love you still?
Dr. David Brizan, a poet, is a Leadership and Life Empowerment Coach. In 1970, the T&T government imprisoned him for supporting the Raffique Shah-led Mutiny and the Black Power Movement. Since then, David has remained uncompromisingly resolute in advocacy for people. His work delivers unconditional personal power (UPP) while providing transformational coaching, training, and empowerment workshops throughout the Caribbean and North America.