Life and Love

Ramkarrun Jokhoo rails against colonialism, strife and greed, but his innate humanity, shown in his poetry, prompts him to temper his disgust at man's malevolence with praise for man's forgiveness and gentle affection. He cries with those who lost loved ones in the tsunami at Banda Aceh, but praises too the bounty and clemency of Nature. He inveighs against materialism and the assaults upon Mother Earth, but relaxes in the quiet joys of brotherhood and the powerful glow of contact between man and woman. Above all, he finds deep reassurance in Divine love: When the courting bulbuls sing the song of romance from the pawpaw tree I see from my window I know You are here. Some of us may detect hints of Hafiz and Omar's Rubiyt in these lines, and certainly Jokhoo has imbued many of his beautiful poems with a sensual awareness and a philosophical acceptance of fate. With these gifts, he welcomes the reader.